"I can't make it out no more than you kin," assented Si. "And I've thought o' that crazy idee, too. You know them boys over there in Rousseau's old division was under Sherman once before, when he was in command at Louisville, and they say that he got crazier'n a locoed steeractually looney, so's they had to relieve him and send him back home to git cured. They'd be really scared about things, but their officers heard old Pap Thomas say that things wuz goin' along all right, and that satisfied 'em. I ain't goin' to worry so long's old Thomas is in command o' the Army o' the Cumberland, and we're in it. He'll take care that things come out straight."
TWO:"You may," the old woman said flatly."It must be very nice, Maria," said Arabella, with a show of cordiality, but which Maria interpreted as an attempt to patronize, "to have your brother back home with you again."
TWO:The Englishman was just in the mood to be savagely tickled at the prospect of a fight. He had not had a good, square one since he had been in the country, and nothing yet had offered so gratifying as the prospect of polishing off one of the despised "Hamerican sojers." Several of the hated officers had strolled up, attracted by the high words, and it would be an additional pleasure to thrash one of their men before their eyes, in revenge for the slights he felt they had put upon him.
"But I haint told you half," continued the Orderly-Sergeant. "Them smarties were quick to find out that Alf Russell and Jim Humphreys leaned strongly toward religion, and they filled 'em with the idea that Cap McGillicuddy was a very devout man, and held family devotions every evening in his tent, in which his company joined."Then Shorty finished his letter:"You haint no right to give us orders no more," asserted Humphreys, flourishing his bat defiantly. "You're only an enlisted man, same as the rest o' us. They told us so, last night, and that we mustn't let you impose on us, as you'd bin doin'. Only the Captain and the Colonel command us. We've bin posted. And if you dare hit any o' us we'll all jump on you and maul your head offen you.""They'll all be certain to be there tonight."