"When did you get him, Corporal?" was the query of one of the crowd.
"I bought four yesterday for four hundred and seventy-five dollars Confederate scrip."
"Why, where did you get that?"
"Bought it in Washington, when we first went through, of a boy on the Avenue for fifteen cents. I
thought there might be a show for it some day or other."
The Corporal was a slender, lantern-jawed, weasel-faced Monongahela raftsman, sharp as a steel-trap.
"The old fellow," continued he, "hung on to five hundred dollars for about an hour. He took me into his house, gave me a nip of old apple brandy, and then he'd talk about his horses and then another nip, till we felt it a little, but no go. I had to jew, for it was all I had. I'd just as leave have given him another hundred, but I didn't tell him so. I told him I got it at Antietam."
"You d——d rascal," said he, "I had a son killed and robbed there, maybe it's his money. It looks as if it had been carried a good while."
"I had played smart with it, rubbed it, wet it, and in my breast pocket on those long marches it was well sweated."
"Suppose it was your son's," said I, "all is fair in war."