"And what did he say?" asked the Colonel, lifting his eyebrows with some appearance of interest.
"He said," replied the Captain, enunciating his words very clearly, as if he had no objection to their producing their full weight on his superior—"That Colonel Egbert Crawford might go to h-ll, and he would go to Boston."
"Did he?—d—n him!" said the Colonel, who seemed to have a small bottle of profanity lately uncorked, or one that he certainly was not in the habit of uncorking in the presence of those on whom he wished to produce a different impression.
"Yes he did," answered the Captain. "He said a little more. Perhaps you would like to have that, while I am at it?"
"That?—yes, out with the whole of it!" spoke the Colonel, with another oath which need not be recorded here as any additional seasoning.
"He took occasion to remark, where the lady who was with him could hear it," Lowndes went on—"that he didn't care a d—n for you, and that you dare not make a complaint against him at Albany, a bit more than you dare jump into a place that is even hotter than the weather is here to-day."
"Did he—the infernal hound!" broke out the Colonel, his dark brows literally corrugated with rage. "I'll teach him whether I dare or not, before I am forty-eight hours older!" But either there was something behind the curtain, or Colonel Egbert Crawford was a man of most angelic temper, for the moment after he broke out into a laugh that was not of the most musical order and said: "Oh, well—Dalton is a pretty good fellow, after all, and perhaps the next Adjutant would be a worse one for the regiment."
With these words Colonel Egbert Crawford passed into the side room by the door of which he had been standing, while Captain Lowndes touched his hat to him very slightly and went on to the larger room towards which the others were proceeding. As the Colonel swung back the door, Smith caught a very quick glance within, and saw a table, with bottles, a pack of cards, a couple of dice-boxes, and four or five persons seated, lounging and smoking. The party appeared to him as if they might have been interrupted in a little harmless Sunday afternoon amusement, and as if they were only waiting for the return of the Colonel to the room, to renew that amusement in a very pleasant and effective manner. That impression was not removed by his hearing, after he had passed through the open door into the other room, a suspicious sound like the rattling of dice and another sound very like the chinking of coin, proceeding from the smaller apartment.
Smith and Brown found very little in the officers' room, dignified by the name of "regimental headquarters," demanding particular record. There were two red pine tables set together and forming a counter, behind which the regimental officers were supposed to be located; and on the end of the tables nearest the front of the house was a small desk, with pigeon-holes, at which, by the same fiction, the Adjutant was supposed to be always sitting, performing the arduous duties of his office. Supported by nails in the ceiling were two flag-staffs, their butts shaped to fit the muzzles of short rifles, and from the upper end of each depending one of the "guidons" of the regiment, gorgeously blue in color and lettered in shaded gold—understood to be the gift of certain ladies who properly appreciated the talents and devotion of the officers and the hopeful prospects of the regiment under formation. Behind the tables was a mantel; and on it stood two decanters partially filled with liquor, a plate of crackers and another of cheese. A Lieutenant was seated at the Adjutant's desk, engaged in filling up blank leaves-of-absence for each in turn, of a disorderly crowd of twenty or thirty soldiers who pressed forward from the door to receive them. Two or three of this crowd presented former leaves, to have them extended. One of these was refused, the Lieutenant laboring under some sort of impression that a private who had been three weeks under enlistment, and absent all that time on leave, would not become very proficient in drill unless he spent at least one week at the encampment before marching. The wronged man did not appear to take the refusal very much to heart, however: he merely remarked to one of the others, loud enough for the Lieutenant to have heard if he had been very observant, that "he didn't care two cusses for the leave: he would go off when he liked and stay as long as he liked, and he should like to see anybody smart enough to stop him."
At the mantel, taking a quiet drink with half a dozen civilian friends who had been admitted behind the tables, stood a tall, soldierly-looking man, pointed out by Woodruff as Lieut. Colonel Burns. Unaccountably, he wore no straps on the shoulder, his blue blouse looking as if it was thrown on for use instead of show, and his whole demeanor that of a man who, if opportunity should only be given him, would be a soldier. He had his sword-belts at the waist, however, and also wore his sword, as if he had some indefinite idea that something would thereby be gained in an appearance of efficiency for the regiment.