t. The glare of
Joe Handy's torch fell on my face, Joe Handy's arm and that of another
gentleman, the worse for liquor, were linked in mine, and they saw
fit to applaud at every step my conversion to the cause of Liberty. We
passed time and time again the respectable door-yards of my Federalist
friends, and I felt their eyes upon me with that look which the angels
have for the fallen. Once, in front of Mr. Wharton's house, Mr. Handy
burned my hair, apologized, staggered, and I took the torch! And I used
it to good advantage in saving the drum from capture. For Mr. Temple,
with all the will in the world, had begun to stagger. At length, after
marching seemingly half the night, they halted by common consent before
the house of a prominent Democrat who shall be nameless, and, after some
minutes of vain importuning, Nick, with a tattoo on the drum, marched
boldly up to the gate and into the yard. A desperate cunning came to my
aid. I flung away the torch, leaving the head of the column in darkness,
broke from Mr. Handy's embrace, and, seizing Nick by the arm, led him
onward through the premises, he drumming with great docility. Followed
by a few stragglers only (some of whom went down in contact with the
trees of the orchard), we came to a gate at the back which I knew well,
which led directly into the little yard that fronted my own rooms behind
Mr. Crede's store. Pulling Nick through the gate, I slammed it, and he
was only beginning to protest when I had him safe within my door, and
the bolt slipped behind him. As I struck a light something fell to the
floor with a crash, an odor of alcohol filled the air, and as the candle
caught the flame I saw a shattered whiskey bottle at my feet and a room
which had been given over to carousing. In spite of my feelings I could
not but laugh at the perfectly irresistible figure my cousin made, as he
stood before me with the drum slung in front of him. His hat was gone,
his dust-covered clothes awry, but he smiled at me benignly and without
a trace of surprise.

"Sho you've come back at lasht, Davy," he said. "You're--you're
very--irregular. You'll lose--law bishness. Y-you're worse'n Andy
Jackson--he's always fightin'."

I relieved him, unprotesting, of the drum, thanking my stars there
was so much as a stick left of it. He watched me with a silent and
exaggerated interest as I laid it on the table. From a distance without
came the shouts of the survivors making for the tavern.

"'