s silent as so many men on a surprise party. The
colonel said--yes, sir, and right in their very teeth--that it was an
infamious, audacious calamy: that whenever he desarted the cause of
liberty, he hoped they would take him, as they had done some Roman
officer or other--I think one Officious, as I understood the
colonel--you've hearn of him, may be--and tie his limbs to wild horses,
and set them adrift, at full speed, taking all his joints apart, so that
not one traitorious limb should be left to keep company with another. It
was a mighty severe punishment, whoever he mought'a been. The British
officers began to frown--and I saw one chap put his hand upon his sword.
It would have done you good to witness the look the colonel gave him, as
he put his own hand to his thigh to feel if his sword was there--he so
naturally forgot he was a prisoner. They made him stop speaking
howsever, because they gave out that it was perditious language; and so,
they dismissed us--but we let them have three cheers to show that we
were in heart."

"It was like Pinckney," said Butler; "I'll warrant him a true man,
Galbraith."

"I'll thribble that warrant," replied Galbraith, "and afterwards make it
nine. I wish you could have hearn him. I always thought a bugle horn the
best music in the world, till that day. But that day Colonel Charles
Cotesworth Pinckney's voice was sweeter than shawns and trumpets, as the
preacher says, and bugles to boot. I have hearn people tell of speeches
working like a fiddle on a man's nerves, major: but, for my part, I
think they sometimes work like a battery of field-pieces, or a whole
regimental band on a parade day. Howsever, I was going on to tell you,
Colonel Pinckney put a stop to all this parleying with our poor fellows;
and knowing, major, that you was likely to be coming this way, he axed
me if I thought I could give the guard the slip, and make off with a
letter to meet you. Well, I studied over the thing for a while, and then
told him a neck was but a neck any how, and that I could try; and so,
when his letter was ready, he gave it to me, telling me to hide it so
that, if I was sarched, it couldn't be found on my person. Do you see
that foot?" added Horse Shoe, smiling, "it isn't so small but that I
could put a letter between the inside sole and the out, longways, or
even crossways, for the matter of that, and that, without so much as
turning down a corner. Correspondent and accordingly I stitched it i