“Well,” said Chadwick, resuming his seat and his dinner with unruffled nerves, temper, and appetite, “it beats the known worl’. It’s the fust time I ever seed a man git down on the floor for to give the in-turn an’ the under-cut, an’ cut the pigeon-wing an’ the double-shuffle, all before a cat could bat her eye. It looks to me that as peart a man as Lemmons there ought to be in the war.”
“Ain’t he in the war?” cried Colonel Watson, excitedly. “Ain’t he forever and eternally in the war? Ain’t he my bully bushwhacker?”
“On what side?” inquired Chadwick.
“The Union, the Union!” exclaimed the colonel, his voice rising into a scream.
“Well,” said Chadwick, “ef you think you kin take the taste out’n this barbecue with talk like that, you are mighty much mistaken.”
After the wedding feast was over, Danny Lemmons seized on his fiddle and made music fine enough and lively enough to set the nimble feet of the mountaineers to dancing. So that, take it all in all, the Christmas of the conscript was as jolly as he could have expected it to be.
When the festivities were concluded there was a consultation between Colonel Watson and Danny Lemmons, and then Captain Moseley and his men were told that they were free to go.
“What about Lovejoy?” asked Moseley.
“Oh, bless you! he goes over the mountain,” exclaimed Danny, with a grin. “Lord, yes! Right over the mountain.”
“Now, I say no,” said Polly, blushing. “Turn the man loose an’ let him go.”