all that sort of
dirty work, upon account of the glibness of his tongue. He was a
remarkable saucy fellow and got nothing but ill-will from the
prisoners--though, I make no doubt, the man is a tolerable sodger on
sarvice. Now, after telling you all this, major, you must know that the
identical, same, particular man that we saw looking through the porch
window at us to-night"--

"Is the man you have been describing? Is it possible? Are you sure of
it?"

"I knowed him the minute I clapped eyes on him: his name is James Curry:
but, as I didn't stay long at Charlestown, and hadn't any thing to do
with him in particular, it seems he didn't remember me."

"You conversed with him?"

"Most sartainly I did. I wanted to gather a little consarning of his
visit up here: but the fellow's been so battered about in the wars, that
he knows how to hold his tongue. I had some mischief in me, and did want
to make him just angry enough to set his speech loose; and, besides, I
felt a little against him upon account of his misdoings with our people
in Carolina, and so, I said some rough things to him; and, as my
discourse ar'n't none of the squarest in pint of grammar and
topographical circumlocution--as Lieutenant Hopkins used to say--why he
set me down for a piece of an idiot, and began to hoax and bamboozle me.
I put that matter straight for him very soon, by just letting him say so
much and no more. And then, as I was a peaceable man, major, he seemed
to see that I didn't want to have no quarrel with him, which made him
push it at me rather too hard, and all my civility ended in my giving
him what he wanted at first--a tolerable, regular thrashing."

The sergeant continued to relate to Butler the details of this
adventure, which he did with more prolixity than the weariness of his
listener was able to endure; for the major, having in the progress of
the narrative got into bed, and having, in the increasing oscitancy of
his faculties, exhausted every expression of assent by which one who
listens to a tale is accustomed to notify his attention--he at length
dropped into a profound sleep, leaving the sergeant to conclude at his
leisure.

When Robinson perceived this, he had nothing left but to betake himself,
with all expedition, to his own rest; whereupon he threw off his coat,
and taking the coverings of the bed appropriated to his use, spread
them upon the floor, as he pronounced an anathema against sleeping on
feathers, (for it