my clothes.
And all this is to be cast up against the chance of meeting a few
rascally Tories. Faith! upon the whole, it would have been as cheap to
fight."

"Whist, Major, you are a young man, and don't study things as I do. You
never catch me without reason on my side. As to standing upon the trifle
of a man or two odds in the way of a fight, when there was need of
scratching, I wouldn't be so onaccommodating as to ax you to do that.
But I had some generalship in view, which I can make appear. This road,
which we have just got into, comes up through Winnsborough, which is one
of the randyvoos of the Tories: now I thought if we outflanked them by
coming through the hills, we mought keep our heads out of a hornets'
nest. The best way, Major Butler, to get along through this world is not
to be quarrelsome; that's my principle."

"Truly, it comes well from you, sergeant, who within two days past have
been in danger of getting your crown cracked at least six times! Were
you not yesterday going to beat a man only for asking a harmless
question? A rough fellow to-boot, Horse Shoe, who might, from
appearance, have turned out a troublesome customer."

"Ho, ho, ho, Major! Do you know who that character was? That was mad
Archy Gibbs, from the Broken Bridge, one of the craziest devils after a
fracaw on the Catawba; a tearing Tory likewise."

"And was that an argument for wishing to fight him?"

"Why, you see, Major, I've got a principle on that subject. It's an
observation I have made, that whenever you come across one of these
rampagious fellows, that's always for breeding disturbances, the best
way is to be as fractious as themselves. You have hearn of the way of
putting out a house on fire by blowing it up with gunpowder?"

"A pretty effectual method, Sergeant."

"Dog won't eat dog," continued Horse Shoe. "Ho, ho! I know these
characters; so I always bullies them. When we stopped yesterday at the
surveyor's, on Blair's Range, to get a little something to eat, and that
bevy of Tories came riding up, with mad Archy at their head, a thought
struck me that the fellows mought be dogging us, and that sot me to
thinking what answer I should make consarning you, if they were to
question me. So, ecod, I made a parson of you, ha, ha, ha! Sure enough,
they began as soon as they sot down in the porch, to axing me about my
business, and then about yourn. I told them, correspondent and
accordingly, that you was a Presbyterian minist