On returning to our own frontiers, I had an opportunity of displaying my exemplary greenness. That message to my brother, with all its _virus_ of insolence, I repeated as faithfully for the spirit, and as literally for the expressions, as my memory allowed me to do: and in that troublesome effort, simpleton that I was, fancied myself exhibiting a soldier's loyalty to his commanding officer. My brother thought otherwise: he was more angry with me than with the enemy. I ought, he said, to have refused all participation in such _sansculottes'_ insolence; to carry it was to acknowledge it as fit to be carried. "Speak civilly to my general," I ought to have told them; "or else get a pigeon to carry your message--if you happen to have any pigeon that knows how to conduct himself like a gentleman among gentlemen." What could they have done to me, said my brother, on account of my recusancy? What monstrous punishments was I dreaming of, from the days of giants and ogres? "At the very worst, they could only have crucified me with the head downward, or impaled me, or inflicted the death by _priné_,[4] or anointed me with honey (a Jewish punishment), leaving me (still alive) to the tender mercies of wasps and hornets." One grows wiser every day; and on this particular day I made a resolution that, if again made prisoner, I would bring no more "jaw" from the Philistines. For it was very unlikely that he, whom I heard solemnly refusing to take "jaw" from whole provinces of England, would take it from the rabble of a cotton factory. If these people _would_ send "jaw," and insisted upon their right to send it, I settled that, henceforward, it must go through the post-office. [Footnote 4: _Priné_--[Greek: prinê], the Greek word for a _saw_. The saw was applied to the chest, and the man was sawed into two halves, leaving a sculptor's bust (man's head and shoulders) for the upper half.] But, in that case, had I not reason to apprehend being sawed in two? I saw no indispensable alternative of that see-saw nature. For there must be two parties--a party to saw, and a party to be sawed. And neither party has a chance of moving an inch in the business without a saw. Now, if neither of the parties will pay for the saw, then it is as good as any one conundrum in Euclid, that nobody can be sawed. For that man must be a top-sawyer, indeed, that can keep the business afloat without a saw. But, with or without the sanction of Euclid, I came to the resolution of never more carrying what is improperly called "chaff," but, by people of refinement, is called "jaw"--that is to say, this was my resolution, in the event of my being again made prisoner; an event which heartily I hoped might never happen. It _did_ happen, however, and very soon. Again, that is, for the third time, I was made prisoner; and this time I managed ill indeed; I _did_ make a mess of it; for I displeased the commander-in-chief in a way that he could not forget.