"Ha! ha!" observed the Conservative Kentucky chap, somewhat hysterically, in the midst of his dance; "of course you didn't see what I was doing?" Then it was, my boy, that I folded my arms after the manner of Hamlet, threw forward my right knee, shook my head profoundly thrice, and murmured, with the poet: "Were his old mother near him now, how would that mother grieve, To see two aces in his hand,--another up his sleeve." "My mother!" exclaimed the Conservative Kentucky chap, suddenly descending into Cimmerian gloom; "Kentucky is my mother, and from her maternal fount I drew the old rye of my existence. But now, Kentucky becomes a indigent pauper under the Constitutional Amendment and the failure of the Bankrupt Bill, and I find myself compelled to take to bluff and poker in the prime of life." Here the poor chap made a move toward tearing his hair, but thought better of it and only scratched a pimple on his chin. Arm in arm we walked slowly forward together, each busied with his own thoughts, until, from a clump of trees by the road-side, there unexpectedly emerged before us that ornament of our national service known as Captain Bob Shorty, with his cap at a fierce cock, his hands in his pockets, and a supernaturally knowing air clothing him as with a garment. "By all that's Federal!" said Captain Bob Shorty, starting at sight of me, "if I didn't take you at first for that ere Confederacy of the name of Munchausen, which has privately appointed to meet me here in single combat." "Why then, really, you know," observed the Conservative Kentucky chap, suddenly coming forward and pleasantly rubbing his hands, "really it would be a good plan for me to go forward and meet him with a view to peace negotiations. Being a Confederacy, he is Kentucky's brother," warbled the Conservative chap, with soft enthusiasm, "and I might tell him that you would pay all his debts, black his boots, run errands for him, and send the President to tell him a little story, if he would give up this conflict. Should he refuse, and even proceed to the extremity of kicking me," said the Conservative Kentucky chap, with awful sternness, "why, then, I should be in favor of letting the matter proceed to the bitter end,--as it had already in my own case." "I am not aweer," observed Captain Bob Shorty, "that you have any business in the matter at all, my old Trojan; but there's the road open to you." It was beautiful, my boy,--touchingly beautiful, and withal unctuous, to observe with what a benignant smile the peaceful Conservative Kentucky Chap departed up the road. We saw him reach a turn in the path, around which the sound of stately approaching footsteps was already becoming audible. We saw him turn it; heard all the footsteps cease; heard a confused murmur,--a sharp scratching as of heels upon gravel; and Kentucky's favorite son was observed to be coming again to his place, with a slight limp in his walk.