"Who lived in that house?" said I, pointing to the log-cabin I had just left.
"Why didn't you leave when you found there was going to be a fight?"
"I did start for to go, but I seed the Yankees comin' thick, and I hurried back t'other way; and jest as I e'enamost got to the brush yonder, I seed the 'Confeds' jest a swarmin' out of the woods. So, seeing I was between two fires, I rund back to the house."
"What did you do when they commenced firing?"
"I cut a hole in the floor with the ax, and hid between the jists."
"You must have been pretty well scared; were you not?"
"Humph! _skeered!_ Lor bless you, _skeered! That aint no name for it!_"
CAMP FUN IN A BURLESQUE LETTER TO A FRIEND.
The other morning I was standing by Billy Briggs, in our tent.
"Hand me them scabbards, Jimmy," said he.
"Yes; boots, I mean. I wonder if these boots were any relation to that beef we ate yesterday. If they will only prove as tough, they'll last me a long time. I say, Cradle!" he called out, "where are you?"
Cradle was our contraband, with a foot of extraordinary length, and heel to match.
"What do you call him Cradle for?" I inquired.
"What would _you_ call him? If he aint a cradle, what's he got rockers on for?"
Cradle made his appearance, with a pair of perforated stockings.
"It's no use," said Billy, looking at them. "Them stockings will do to put on a sore throat, but won't do for feet. It is humiliating for a man like me to be without stockings. A man may be bald-headed, and it's genteel; but to be barefooted, it's ruination. The legs are good, too," he added, thoughtfully, "but the feet are gone. There is something about the heels of stockings and the elbows of stove-pipes, in this world, that is all wrong, Jimmy."
A supply of stockings had come that day, and were just being given out. A pair of very large ones fell to Billy's lot. Billy held them up before him.
"Jimmy," said he, "these are pretty bags to give a little fellow like me. Them stockings was knit for the President, or a young gorilla, certain!" and he was about to bestow them upon Cradle, when a soldier, in the opposite predicament, made an exchange. "Them stockings made me think of the prisoner I scared so the other day," said Billy.