"That's so," said the old Rebel. "I have two other sons there; I would go myself, it I wasn't seventy-eight and upwards."
"Well, looky here," said I, "this isn't talking horse; we'll manage your sons, and you, too, if you don't dry up on your treason slang. Now, old covey, four hundred and seventy-five or I'm back to camp without them."
"I turned and got about ten steps, when he called me back and told me to take them. I got a bully pair of matches, fine blacks, that a Colonel in the Regiment paid me one hundred and twenty-five for at first sight, and a fine pacing bay that our Major gave me seventy-five for, and this one's left."
"Doctor, I'm about tired of trotting around after
them other forty. They're givin' out cracker rations, and I don't want to be cheated out of mine, and I must go," said the Corporal, turning quickly to the Doctor.
The latter personage snapped his eyes, and kept his cap bobbing up and down, by wrinkling his forehead, as he somewhat plaintively asked the crowd for the funds.
"Good Lord! Doctor, you might as well try to milk a he-goat with a bramble bush as to get money in camp now," said the Major.
"Corporal," said the Adjutant, a fast friend of the Doctor's, and being of a musical turn, his partner in many a Dutch duet, as a bright idea struck him, "you don't want the money now—there are no sutlers about, suppose the Doctor gives you an order on the Pay-Master."
"Well," said the Corporal, after some little study, and keeping a sharp look-out on the Adjutant, whose features were fixed, "that's a fact, I have no use for the money now. If one of you Head-Quarter officers endorses it, I will. 'Spose it's all straight."
The Adjutant drew the order, and one of the Field-Officers endorsed it, after the manner of documents forwarded through regular military channels: