Here the General of the Mackerel Brigade made his appearance from the rear, and says he:
"What do you desire, Miss P. Hen?"
"On, to Paris!" shrieked the maiden. "On, to the capital of the brutalized dealers in human flesh and blood, and drag them to the scaffold!" Here Miss P. Hen drew a long breath, and says she, "Let's have no vacillating."
"All right, Mamsell," says the General.
"And the country'd have more confidence in you," says Miss P. Hen, vigorously, "if you'd stop chewing that nasty tobacco, which is only fit for brutes and dealers in human flesh and blood. On, to Paris! or"—
At this juncture, my boy, the aged Miriam caught sight of the Conservative Kentucky Chap, haranguing against her down the Accomac road, and toddled furiously away to chastise him with her umbrella.
Meanwhile, the Orange County Howitzers had sent some pounds of shrapnel in the direction of the hostile Confederacy on the roof; and as the bricks began to fly from the chimney, and the dried beans came at longer intervals, Regiment 5 of the Mackerel Brigade moved nearer to the beleaguered capital, and opened an effective fire of musketry upon the azure zenith. Captain Villiam Brown was about to order an assault, when certain windows in the upper stories of Paris were thrown up, and there rained therefrom such a hurtling tempest of stew-pans, hearth-brushes, shaving-cups, and boxes of blacking, that hundreds of Mackerel spectacles were broken. Simultaneously the sanguinary Confederacy on the roof put a double charge of dried beans through the coat-tails of Captain Bob Shorty, and our troops—"the object of the reconnoissance being fully accomplished"—withdrew in good order to their former position.
Quickly, thereupon, appeared a canvas banner from the garret windows of Paris, inscribed: "Chalk up the First Round for the Southern Confederacy!" and the first day's fight was over.
All that night, my boy, did the venerable Mackerel Brigade lay upon their arms, finding all their hands asleep, in consequence, when morning broke; and as often as a venturesome Confederacy skulked near Fort Bledandide to steal a cannon, just so often did one Mackerel picket nudge another Mackerel picket and ask him if he didn't think he heard something.
At last there came a gradual hush over everything, as though the whole world were an antechamber to a room in which rested some dear sick child. Then the sharp edges of this terrestrial bowl in which we hang over the sun at night began to define themselves all around, as though an early candle had just been brought underneath to light the fire. And at last a slowly-deepening lurid glow appeared around the sides of the bowl, as though the fire was just getting a start. It was morning.