settin' him up
in business in some other stand. Five hundred dollars'd give him a good
start. His hair'll soon grow agin."

"The worst of it," sighed Shorty, "is that it ain't good likker.
Otherwise it'd be different. But it's pizener than milk-sick or
loco-weed. It's aqua-fortis, fish-berries, tobacco juice and ratsbane.
That stuff'd eat a hole in a tin pan."{236}

"The Captain turned the rest o' his money over to the hospital,"
continued the Deacon. "I might do that."

"Never do it in the world, Pap," protested Si. "Better burn it up at
once. It'd be the next worst thing to givin' it back to him. It'd
jest be pamperin' and encouragin' a lot o' galoots that lay around the
hospitals to keep out o' fights. None o' the wounded or really sick'd
git the benefit of a cent of it. They wuz all sent away weeks ago to
Nashville, Louisville, and back home. You jest ought to see that bummer
gang. Last week me and Shorty wuz on fatigue duty down by one o' the
hospitals. There wuzzent nobody in the hospital but a few 'shell-fever'
shirks, who're too lazy to work on the fortifications, and we saw a
crowd of civilians and men in uniform set down to a finer dinner than
you kin git in any hotel. Shorty wanted to light some shells and roll in
amongst 'em, but I knowed that it'd jest make a muss that we'd have to
clean up afterward."

"But what am I going to do with it?" asked the Deacon despairingly. "I
don't want no money in my hands that don't belong to me, and especially
sich money as that, which seems to have a curse to every bill. If we
could only find out the men he tuk it from."

"Be about as easy as drivin' a load o' hay back into the field, and
fitting each spear o' grass back on the stalk from which it was cut,"
interjected Shorty.

"Or I might send it anonymously to the Baptist Board o' Missions,"
continued the Deacon.

"Nice way to treat the little heathens," objected Si. "Send them likker
money."{237}

The Deacon groaned.

"Tell you what we might do, Pap," said Si, as a bright idea struck him.
"There's a widder, a Union woman, jest outside the lines, whose house
wuz burned down by the rebels. She could build a splendid new house with
$100 better'n the one she wuz livin' in before. Send her $100.

"Not a bad idee," said the Deacon approvingly, as he poked the ashes in
his pipe with his little finger.

"And, Pap," continued Si, encouraged by the reception of this
suggestion, "there's poor Bill Ellerlee, who lost