"I'll thribble that warrant," replied Galbraith, "and afterwards make it nine. I wish you could have hearn him. I always thought a bugle horn the best music in the world, till that day. But that day Colonel Charles Cotesworth Pinckney's voice was sweeter than shawns and trumpets, as the preacher says, and bugles to boot. I have hearn people tell of speeches working like a fiddle on a man's nerves, major: but, for my part, I think they sometimes work like a battery of field-pieces, or a whole regimental band on a parade day. Howsever, I was going on to tell you, Colonel Pinckney put a stop to all this parleying with our poor fellows; and knowing, major, that you was likely to be coming this way, he axed me if I thought I could give the guard the slip, and make off with a letter to meet you. Well, I studied over the thing for a while, and then told him a neck was but a neck any how, and that I could try; and so, when his letter was ready, he gave it to me, telling me to hide it so that, if I was sarched, it couldn't be found on my person. Do you see that foot?" added Horse Shoe, smiling, "it isn't so small but that I could put a letter between the inside sole and the out, longways, or even crossways, for the matter of that, and that, without so much as turning down a corner. Correspondent and accordingly I stitched it in. The colonel then told me to watch my chance and make off to you in the Jarseys, as fast as I could. He told me, besides, that I was to stay with you, because you was likely to have business for me to do." "That's true, good sergeant." "There came on a darkish, drizzly evening; and a little before roll call, at sun set, I borrowed an old forage cloak from Corporal Green--you mought have remembered him--and out I went towards the lines, and sauntered along the edge of the town, till I came to one of your pipe-smoking, gin-drinking Hessians, keeping sentry near the road that leads out towards Ashley ferry:--a fellow that had no more watch in him--bless your soul!--as these Dutchmen hav'n't--than a duck on a rainy day. So, said I, coming up boldly to him, 'Hans, wie gehet es'--'Geh zum Teufel,' says he, laughing--for he knowed me. That was all the Dutch I could speak, except I was able to say it was going to rain, so I told him--'Es will regnen'--which he knowed as well as I did, for it was raining all the time. I had a little more palaver with Hans, and, at last, he got up on his feet and set to walking up and down. By this time the drums beat for evening quarters, and I bid Hans good night; but, instead of going away, I squatted behind the Dutchman's sentry box;--and, presently, the rain came down by the bucket full; it got very dark and Hans was snug under cover. The grand rounds was coming; I could hear the tramp of feet, and as no time was to be lost, I made a long step and a short story of it, by just slipping over the lines and setting out to seek my fortune." "Well done, sergeant! You were ever good at these pranks."