“'O woman! in our hours of ease uncertain, coy, and hard to please,'” he murmured. “Come, sit down, stranger; 'Sit down an' share a soldier's couch, a soldier's fare.' Not as I'm a sojer,” he hastened to explain, “but thet's how it is in ther book. Say, old woman, kint ye kinder sker up some coffee fer we uns—leastwise whut us Confeds call coffee?”
Without much difficulty I induced Mrs. Brennan to draw her chair once more to the table, and I sat down beside her.
“You are Confederate, then?” I asked, curious to know upon which side his sympathies were enlisted in the struggle.
He glanced warily at my gray jacket, then his shrewd, shifty eyes wandered to the blue and yellow cavalry cloak lying on the floor.
“Wal, I jist don't know, Cap,” he said cautiously, continuing to eat as he talked, “as I'm much o' enything in this yere row. First ther durned gray-backs they come snoopin' up yere, an' run off all my horgs; then ther blame blue-bellies come 'long an' cut down every lick o' my corn fodder, so thet I'll be cussed if I ain't 'bout ready ter fight either side. Anyhow I ain't did no fightin' yit worth talkin' 'bout, fer Mariar is pow'ful feared I'd git hurt.”
Maria regarded him scornfully.
“Hiding out, I suppose?”
“Wal, 'tain't very healthful fer us ter be stayin' et hum much o' ther time, long with that thar Red Lowrie, an' Jim Hale, an' the rest o' thet cattle 'round yere.”
“Guerillas pretty thick now in the mountains?”
He glanced up quickly, his shrewd gray eyes on my face, and Maria turned about as she stood beside the fireplace.