While Richards was hitching his horse in the bushes the sergeant stood on the bank of the river with his arms folded and his chin swinging from side to side.  When he saw Richards in the open he rushed for him like a young bull that feels the first swelling of his horns.  It was not a fair, stand-up, knock-down English fight, but a Scotch tussle, in which either could strike, kick, bite or gouge.  After a few blows they clinched and whirled and fell, Gordon on top—­with which advantage he began to pound the tough from the Pocket savagely.  Woods made as if to pull him off, but the Infant drew his pistol.  “Keep off!”

“He’s killing him!” shouted Woods, halting.

“Let him holler ‘Enough,’ then,” said the Infant.

“He’s killing him!” shouted Woods.

“Let Gordon’s friends take him off, then,” said the Infant.  “Don’t you touch him.”

And it was done.  Richards was senseless and speechless—­he really couldn’t shout “Enough.”  But he was content, and the day left a very satisfactory impression on him and on his friends.

If they misbehaved in town they would be arrested:  that was plain.  But it was also plain that if anybody had a personal grievance against one of the Guard he could call him out of the town limits and get satisfaction, after the way of his fathers.  There was nothing personal at all in the attitude of the Guard towards the outsiders; which recognition was a great stride toward mutual understanding and final high regard.

All that day I saw that something was troubling the tutor from New England.  It was the Moral Sense of the Puritan at work, I supposed, and, that night, when I came in with a new supply of “billies” and gave one to each of my brothers, the tutor looked up over his glasses and cleared his throat.

“Now,” said I to myself, “we shall catch it hot on the savagery of the South and the barbarous Method of keeping it down”; but before he had said three words the colonel looked as though he were going to get up and slap the little dignitary on the back—­which would have created a sensation indeed.

“Have you an extra one of those—­those—­”

“Billies?” I said, wonderingly.

“Yes.  I—­I believe I shall join the Guard myself,” said the tutor from New England.

CHRISTMAS NIGHT WITH SATAN

No night was this in Hades with solemn-eyed Dante, for Satan was only a woolly little black dog, and surely no dog was ever more absurdly misnamed.  When Uncle Carey first heard that name, he asked gravely: 

“Why, Dinnie, where in h——­,” Uncle Carey gulped slightly, “did you get him?” And Dinnie laughed merrily, for she saw the fun of the question, and shook her black curls.

“He didn’t come f’um that place.”