“’You can’t help that, old man,’ says they; ‘fo’ by that time the conscript law’ll be changed so’s to go over the heads of older men than you.’
“’Then,’ says I, ‘the fust chance presents itself, I fling down my musket and go spang No’th.’
“They had me put under arrest for that, and kep’ me in the guard-house seven months. I liked that well enough. I was saved a deal of hard march’n’ and lay’n’ out in the cold, that winter.
“’Why don’t ye come in boys,’ says I, ‘and have a warm?’
“I knowed what I was about! The old man was right ignorant, but the old man was right sharp!”
We passed the line of Sedgwick’s retreat a few miles from Fredericksburg.
“Shedrick’s men was in line acrost the road hyer, extendin’ into the woods on both sides; they had jest butchered their meat, and was ishyin’ rations and beginnin’ to cook their suppers, when Magruder struck ’em on the left flank.” (Elijah was wrong; it was not Magruder, but McLaws. These local guides make many such mistakes, and it is necessary to be on one’s guard against them.) “They jest got right up and skedaddled! The whole line jest faced to the right, and put for Banks’s Ford. Thar’s the road they went. They left it piled so full of wagons, Magruder couldn’t follah, but his artillery jest run around by another road I’ll show ye, hard as ever they could lay their feet to the ground, wheeled their guns in position on the bluffs by the time Shedrick got cleverly to crossin’, and played away. The way they heaped up Shedrick’s men was awful!”
Every mile or two we came to a small farm-house, commonly of logs, near which there was usually a small crop of corn growing.
“Every man after he got home, after the fall of Richmond, put in to raise a little somethin’ to eat. Some o’ the corn looks poo’ly, but it beats no corn at all, all to pieces.”
We came to one field which Elijah pronounced a “monstrous fine crap.” But he added,—