"When the Prince of the Thebaird sent this message to the queen of lower Egypt, "Tomorrow I will knock at the door of your palace with the hilt of my spear," she returned this warning, "And I will welcome you with bloody hands, and the crocodiles of the Nile shall devour your carcass."
"What shall be our message, Mr. Flowers?"
The regulator thought a little dreamily for awhile, and then with the usual squint in the right eye replied drowsily,
"Wall, thar is two ways to kill a nigger unbeknownst to him. I kin ku-klux him, or I kin strike him with forked litenin; but I haint got ammunition enuff to kill a hole passul at wunce."
The Colonel unfolded and laid upon the table a large sheet of paper, such as engineers use in diagramming, and began in a perfunctory way to mark off lines, angles, eccentric and concentric figures, until he fixed the point of his pencil suspiciously at the upper abutment of a bridge that spanned a rivulet, with this remark,
"Just here, sir, must be the point of attack. This is the only defensible position upon the plantation. If the malicious negroes pass this bridge, all is lost. Now, my friend," he continued, "heroic diseases must be healed with heroic remedies. You and I are old soldiers. Up and down the Chickahominy our army would have been tin soldiers but for our sappers and miners. Now you may sap and mine to your heart's content," he said jocularly. "Do you understand, Mr. Flowers?"
"No, not eggzactly," replied Flowers. "Dos yer want ther cussed niggers drounded?" he asked.
"No, only frightened so they will let me alone," replied the Colonel.
"Frightened!" ejaculated the regulator. "Wall, fokeses in gineral gits frightened before they gits drounded, don't they? If I don't mistrust you, Kernel, you wants the bridge upsot, and then you wants the kerridge upsot, and then you wants the blamed niggers upsot, altogether in the crick."