"I want that carpetsack and umbrella of yours," said the Sergeant, coming back. "I've no doubt you've got 'em both full of treasonable documents and information for your rebel friends. Guard, watch both these men closely, and see that they don't destroy any papers, nor throw anything out the window."
"Young man," said the Deacon resolutely, "you can't have that carpetsack or that umbreller. They're my property. If you tech 'em I'll have the law on you. I'll sue you for trespass, larceny, assault and battery, and intent to provoke. I hain't done nothin' to justify it. I'm Josiah Klegg, of Posey County, Injianny, Deacon in the Ebenezer Church, on Mill Crick. I'm goin' down to Murfreesboro' to visit my son, Josiah Klegg, jr., o' the 200th Injianny Volunteers. You all know him. He's an officer; he's the boy that tried to git a commissary wagon away from the rebels durin' the battle, and he and Shorty 've got a house with a tin roof."
The other occupants gathered around and laughed derisively.
"Twon't do, old man," said the Sergeant, trying to wrest the carpetsack away. "You tell a pretty story, and you're well disguised, but we're onto you. We got full particulars about you from Louisville. You're a bad lot down there in Posey County. There's a Knights of the Golden Circle Lodge under every sycamore. You'd be at Gen. Bragg's headquarters to-morrow night if we let you alone."
He pulled hard at the carpetsack, and Deacon Klegg resisted with all his sturdy might. His strength was quite a match for the Sergeant's, but other soldiers came to help the latter. The handles came off in the struggle, and the Deacon was forced down into his seat. The other man took advantage of the confusion to work his way through the crowd to the door and jump off. This angered the Sergeant, and coming back to where Mr. Klegg sat, exhausted and intensely mad, he said:
"I'll make sure that you don't get away, anyhow. I ought to've done this at first."
So saying, he snapped a hand-cuff over Mr. Klegg's wrist and then over the arm of the seat.
The Deacon was never so humiliated in his life. He was simply speechless in his rage and mortification.
Among the many of Gen. Rosecrans's eccentricities and vagrant fancies was one for prowling around through his camps at night, wearing a private's overcoat and cap. One night he strolled into the camp of the 200th Ind. The superior architecture of Si and Shorty's cabin struck him, and he decided to look inside. He knocked on the door.
"Come in," shouted Si.