He had been married a year or more when, one afternoon, he was compelled to ride down to Gullettsville under whip and spur for a doctor. There was a good deal of confused activity in the town. Old men and young boys were stirring around with blue cockades in their hats, and the women wore blue rosettes on their bosoms. Three negroes in uniform--a contribution from the nearest railroad town--were parading up and down the straggling street with fife and drums, and a number of men were planting a flag-pole in front of the court-house. No conscientious historian can afford to ignore a coincidence, and it so happened that upon the very day that league Poteet's wife presented him with the puzzle of a daughter, Fate presented his countrymen with the problem of war. That night, sitting in the door of his house and smoking his pipe, Teague witnessed other developments of the coincidence. In the next room the baby-girl squalled most persistently; down in the valley the premonitions of war made themselves heard through the narrow throat of a small cannon which, until then, had been used only to celebrate the Fourth of July. The noise of a horse's hoofs roused Teague's hounds, and some one called out from the road-- "Hello, Poteet!" "Ah-yi!" "You hearn the racket?" "My gal-baby keeps up sich a hollerin' I can't hear my own years." "_Oh!_" "You better b'lieve! Nine hours ole, an' mighty peart. What's them Restercrats in the valley cuttin' up the'r scollops fer?" "Whoopin' up se_say_sion. Sou' Ca'liny done plum gone out, an' Georgy a-gwine." Teague Poteet blew a long, thin cloud of home-made tobacco-smoke heavenward, leaned back heavily in his chair, and replied-- "Them air Restercrats kin go wher' they dang please; I'm a-gwine to stay right slambang in the United States." There was a little pause, as if the man on horseback was considering the matter. Then the response came-- "Here's at you!" "Can't you 'light?" asked Poteet. "Not now," said the other; "I'll git on furder." The man on horseback rode on across the mountain to his home. Another mountaineer, seeing the rockets and hearing the sound of the cannon, came down to Poteet's for information. He leaned over the brush-fence. "What's up, Teague?" "Gal-baby; reg'lar surbinder." "_Shoo!_ won't my ole 'oman holler! What's up down yan?" "Them dad-blasted Restercrats a secedin' out'n the United States." "They say theyer airter savin' of the'r niggers," said the man at the fence. "Well, I hain't got none, and I hain't a wantin' none; an' it hain't been ten minnits sence I ups an' says to Dave Hightower, s' I, 'The United States is big enough for me.'" "Now you er makin' the bark fly," said the man at the fence. During the night other men came down the mountain as far as Poteet's, and always with the same result.