as he came from that section of the State.  He was wonderfully handy with his fists.  I think he could knock a fellow down so that he would fall-harder, and lie longer than any person I ever saw.  We made a tacit division of duties:  I did the talking, and “Egypt” went through the manual labor of knocking our opponents down.  In the numerous little encounters in which our company was engaged, “Egypt” would stand by my side, silent, grim and patient, while I pursued the dialogue with the leader of the other crowd.  As soon as he thought the conversation had reached the proper point, his long left arm stretched out like a flash, and the other fellow dropped as if he had suddenly come in range of a mule that was feeling well.  That unexpected left-hander never failed.  It would have made Charles Reade’s heart leap for joy to see it.

In spite of our company and our watchfulness, the Raiders beat us badly on one occasion.  Marion Friend, of Company I of our battalion, was one of the small traders, and had accumulated forty dollars by his bartering.  One evening at dusk Delaney’s Raiders, about twenty-five strong, took advantage of the absence of most of us drawing rations, to make a rush for Marion.  They knocked him down, cut him across the wrist and neck with a razor, and robbed him of his forty dollars.  By the time we could rally Delaney and his attendant scoundrels were safe from pursuit in the midst of their friends.

This state of things had become unendurable.  Sergeant Leroy L. Key, of Company M, our battalion, resolved to make an effort to crush the Raiders.  He was a printer, from Bloomington, Illinois, tall, dark, intelligent and strong-willed, and one of the bravest men I ever knew.  He was ably seconded by “Limber Jim,” of the Sixty-Seventh Illinois, whose lithe, sinewy form, and striking features reminded one of a young Sioux brave.  He had all of Key’s desperate courage, but not his brains or his talent for leadership.  Though fearfully reduced in numbers, our battalion had still about one hundred well men in it, and these formed the nucleus for Key’s band of “Regulators,” as they were styled.  Among them were several who had no equals in physical strength and courage in any of the Raider chiefs.  Our best man was Ned Carrigan, Corporal of Company I, from Chicago—­who was so confessedly the best man in the whole prison that he was never called upon to demonstrate it.  He was a big-hearted, genial Irish boy, who was never known to get into trouble on his own account, but only used his fists when some of his comrades were imposed upon.  He had fought in the ring, and on one occasion had killed a man with a single blow of his fist, in a prize fight near St. Louis.  We were all very proud of him, and it was as good as an entertainment to us to see the noisiest roughs subside into deferential silence as Ned would come among them, like some grand mastiff in the midst of a pack of yelping curs.  Ned entered into the regulating scheme heartily.  Other stalwart specimens of physical manhood in our battalion were Sergeant Goody, Ned Johnson, Tom Larkin, and others, who, while not approaching Carrigan’s perfect manhood, were still more than a match for the best of the Raiders.