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isit was to the stables, where I hoped to find Falcon. Imagine my disgust on hearing that, through an accident on the line, the unlucky horse had been shut up for forty-six hours in his box, with provender just enough for one day. He had been well tended, however, and judiciously fed in small quantities at frequent intervals, and, barring that he looked rather "tucked up," did not seem much the worse for his enforced fast. I found Shipley's letter, too, where I had been told to expect it; he had got so far without let or hindrance; the meeting-place was set about forty miles northwest of Cumberland. I spent the evening, not unpleasantly, partly at the house of a "sympathizing" resident to whom I had been recommended; partly in the society of the most miraculous Milesian I ever encountered--off the stage or out of a book. He was stationed in Cumberland on some sort of recruiting service, and from dawn to midnight never ceased to oil his already lissom tongue with "caulkers" of every imaginable liquor. I was told that at no hour of the twenty-four had any man seen him thoroughly drunk or decently sober. When we first met, his cups had brought him nearly to the end of the belligerent or irascible stage; he was then inveighing against the dwellers in the Shenandoah Valley, where he had lately been quartered, for their want of patriotism in declining to furnish their defenders with gratuitous whisky and tobacco; threatening the most dreadful reprisals when he should visit "thim desateful Copperhids" again. Suddenly, without any warning, he slid into the maudlin phase, taking his parable of lamentation against "this crule warr." "I weep, sirr," said he, "over the rrupture of mee adhopted counthree--the counthree that resaved mee with opin arrums, when I was floying from the feece of toirants," &c., &c. When he informed me that he belonged to Mulligan's division, the words, "I suppose so," escaped me, involuntary. Truly, if the rest of the brigade resembled the specimen before me, only the mighty Celt, whom Thackeray had made immortal, could command it. I shall never again look on the "stock" freshman as an exaggeration or caricature. I waited, the next morning, till a heavy snowstorm had resolved itself into a thin, driving sleet; then my saddle-bags were strapped on Falcon, and I set forth alone, the good horse striding away, as strong under me as if he had never heard of short commons. We baited at Frostburgh, a sma
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