changes on it. A popular comedian had sung and made much of it, and its
composer had presumably made something if not much out of it, and
Sanders was sure of laughter and applause when he sang it at the
"stags." One verse was of a man who came home in a maudlin state and his
wife remarked, "Well, you are beautiful. With the accent on the full."
Another was of a man who wanted unlimited credit at a bar and was told,
"I like not your arithmetic. With the accent on the tick." All very poor
literature, perhaps, but it amused, and this night after singing three
verses of the old song, Sanders "turned loose" on a verse of his own
which, when heard, the mess applauded and chorused to the echo, and
broke up singing again and again Sanders's telling hit in the last line:

We had a cap in our corps
Who left us years ago,
Who never said a manly word
Nor struck a manly blow.
He never faced when he could dodge,
He only spoke to slur,
And now he is a colonel,
But the accent's on the cur.

And that was Devers's requiem in the Eleventh Horse as well as in the
house of Congress. He never vexed them more.

One of the old names was lacking on the list that accompanied the
remonstrance,--that of the man of whom, nearly a decade before, Devers
"only spoke to slur." Lieutenant Davies would not sign. He was with the
regiment too, but, just as of old, eschewed the club-room and all
gatherings of the kind. They had taken the paper to him and he read,
pondered, and said no. Gray it was, now captain of "I" Troop, with which
Davies was on duty as first lieutenant, who draughted the paper, and
confidently presented it to his subaltern. "Why not?" said he, in
surprise. "No man ever did more to injure you except perhaps----" And
here Gray broke off short in sudden confusion.

"Perhaps that is why I prefer not to be quoted against him," said
Davies, quietly. And mentally kicking himself, as he expressed it, for
making such a "break" as in his bungling half allusion to the exception,
Gray hastened away to tell of it. His story came to unsympathetic ears.

"In my opinion," said Sanders, "if you mean that other fellow, he didn't
injure Parson half as much as he hurt himself."

That, too, was an old story in the Eleventh by this time. Six long
months was Davies absent from the regiment on his map-work at division
head-quarters. Then came the customary call to the field for another
season of scouting and c