et and hands were constantly in the way, and into
everything else that they should not be.

"Somehow, Si," he said, looking at his offspring with contemplative eye,
"you seem to have growed like a cornstalk in July, and yit when I come
to measure you you don't seem no taller nor heavier than when you went
away. How is it?"

"Don't know, Pap," Si answered. "I feel as if I'd had more'n 10 long
years o' growth since we crossed the Ohio River. Yit, you don't seem a
minute older than when I went away."

"I didn't feel no older," returned the father, "until I got in that
guard-house last night. Then I could feel my hair gittin' grayer every
hour, and my teeth droppin' out."

"I'm afraid you didn't git much chance to sleep, Pap," said Si
sympathetically.

"Loss o' sleep was the least part of it," said the Deacon feelingly.
"I kin stand a little loss o' sleep without any partickler bother. It
wasn't bein' kept awake so much as the way I was kept awake that bore on
me."

"Why, what happened?" asked Si.

"Better ask what didn't happen," groaned his father. "Used to have
some mighty rough shivarees when I was a boy, and'd jest settled on the
Wabash. Lots o' toughs then, 'specially 'mong the flatboat-men, who'd
nothin' to drink but new sod-cornwhisky, that'd fight in every spoonful.
But for sure, straight-out tumultuousness that guard-house last night
gave six pecks for every bushel of a Wabash shivaree."

Shorty looked meaningly at Si. "Guard-house fellers's likely to be a
ructionary lot o' roosters. Awful sorry you got in among 'em. Was they
very bad?"

"Well, I should say. When I was chucked in they wuz havin' a regular
prize fight, 'cordin' to rules, as to whether Rousseau or Negley wuz the
best General. The Rousseau man got licked, and then the other Rousseau
men wuzzent satisfied, and proposed to lick all the Negley men in the
guard-house; but the Sheridan men interfered, and made the Rousseau men
cool down. They they turned their attention to me. They raised a row
about a citizen being put in among them. It was a disgrace. The guard
house was only intended for soldiers and gentlemen, and no place for
condemned civilians. Then some one said that I had been arrested as a
Knight o' the Golden Circle, on my way to Bragg, with information from
the Injianny Knights. Another insisted that he knowed me, and that I wuz
Vallandigham himself, brought down there to be sent through the lines.
Then I thought sure they'd kill m