This levity and ridicule were too much for Colonel P. Desmit to endure. He leaned out of the carriage window, and shaking his gold-headed cane at the mirthful marauders denounced them in language fearful in its impotent wrath.
"Take me to General Sherman, you rascals! I want to see the general!" he yelled over and over again.
"The hell you do! Well, now, mister, don't you know that the General is too nervous to see company to-day? He's just sent us on ahead a bit to say to strangers that he's compelled to refuse all visitors to-day. He gits that way sometimes, does 'Old Bill,' so ye mustn't think hard of him, at all."
"Take me to the general, you plundering pirates!" vociferated the enraged Colonel. "I'll see if a country gentleman travelling in his own carriage along the highway is to be robbed and abused in this manner!" "Robbed, did he say?" queried one, with the unmistakable brogue of an Irishman. "Faith, it must be the gintleman has somethin' very important along wid him in the carriage, that he's gittin' so excited about; and its meself that'll not see the gintleman imposed upon, sure." This with a wink at his comrades. Then to the occupant of the carriage: "What did yer honor say might be yer name, now? It's very partickler the General is about insthructin' us ter ax the names of thim that's wantin' an' inthroduction to him, ye know?"
The solemnity of this address half deceived the irate Southron, and he answered with dignity, "Desmit—Colonel Potestatem Desmit, of Horsford County, sir."
"Ah, d'ye hear that, b'ys? Faith, it's a kurnel it is ye've been a shtoppin' here upon the highway! Shure it may be he's a goin' to the Gineral wid a flag of thruce, belike."
"I do wish to treat with the General," said Desmit, thinking he saw a chance to put in a favorable word.
"An' d'ye hear that, b'ys? Shure the gintleman wants to thrate the Gineral. Faith it'll be right glad the auld b'y'll be of a dhrap of somethin' good down here in the pine woods."
"Can I see the General, gentlemen?" asked Desmit, with a growing feeling that he had taken the wrong course to accomplish his end. The crowd of "bummers" constantly grew larger. They were mounted upon horses and mules, jacks and jennets, and one of them had put a "McClellan saddle" and a gag-bit upon one of the black polled cattle which abound in that region, and which ambled easily and briskly along with his rider's feet just brushing the low "poverty-pines" which grew by the roadside. They wore all sorts of clothing. The blue and the gray were already peacefully intermixed in the garments of most of them. The most grotesque variety prevailed especially in their head-gear, which culminated in the case of one who wore a long, barrel-shaped, slatted sun-bonnet made out of spotted calico. They were boisterous and even amusing, had they not been well armed and apparently without fear or reverence for any authority or individual. For the present, the Irishman was evidently in command, by virtue of his witty tongue.
"Can ye see the Gineral, Kurnel?" said he, with the utmost apparent deference; "av coorse ye can, sir, only it'll be necessary for you to lave your carriage an' the horses and the nagur here in the care of these gintlemen, while I takes ye to the Gineral mesilf."