“And yit another thing I found out that day was that the feller back home who told me one Southerner could whip five Yankees, single-handed, made a triflin' error in his calculations; or else the Yankees he had in mind when he uttered the said remark was a different breed frum the bunch we tackled that day in the backskirts of the thrivin' little community of Belmont, Missoury. But the most important thing of all the things I discovered was about Herman Felsburg--only that come later. “In the early stages of that little battle the Federals sort of shoved us back a few pegs; but about three o'clock in the evenin' the tide swung the other way, and shortly thereafter their commandin' general remembered some pressin' business back in Cairo, Illinois, that needed attendin' to right away, and he started back there to do so, takin' whut was left of his army along with him. So we claimed it ez a victory for us, which it was. “Along toward dusk, when the fightin' had died down, our company was layin' alongside a country road jest outside the town, purty well tuckered out, and cut up some. We were all tellin' each other how brave we'd been, when along down the road toward us come a file of prisoners, under guard, lookin' mighty forlorn and low-sperrited. They was the first prisoners any of us had ever seen; so we jumped up from where we was stretched out and crowded up round 'em, pokin' fun at 'em. The guards halted 'em to let 'em rest and we had a good chance to exchange the compliments of the season with 'em. Eight in the front rank of the blue-bellies was one big furreign-lookin' feller, with no hat on, and a head of light yaller hair. He ripped out somethin' in German--a cuss word, I take it. Doubtless he was tellin' us to go plum' to hell. Well, suh, at that, Herman jumped like he'd been stung by one of these here yaller jackets. I reckin he was homesick, anyway, fur the sound of his own language. “He walked over and begun jabberin' in Dutch with the big sandy-haired Yank, and the Yank jabbered back; and they talked together mighty industrious until the prisoners moved on--about fifteen minutes, I should say, offhanded. And ez we went back to lay down ag'in I took notice that Herman had the funniest look on his face that ever I seen on almost any human face. And he kept scratchin' his head, like there was somethin' on his mind, troublin' him, that he jest simply couldn't make out noway. But he didn't say nothin' to nobody then--jest kept on scratchin' and studyin'. “In fact, he held in till nearly ten o'clock that night. We made camp right there on the edge of the battleground. I was fixin' to turn in when Herman got up frum where he'd been squattin', over by a log fire, lookin' in the flames; and he come over to me and teched me on the shoulder. “'Pilly Briest,' he says in that curious way of hisn, 'I should like to speak mit you. Please, you gecomin' mit me.'