“That’s the Black Guards, ain’t it?”

“No, sir; you are thinking of the Black Watch, a name of the Forty-second Highlanders.”

“D’ye hear that, you Sambo?  You orter go and git draafted inter that corpse, and go araound breakin’ the wimmin’s hyearts in a cullud flannel petticut.”

“There are no negroes, sir, in the Black Watch,” interposed the corporal.

“See heah, yoh Yankee Canajiun,” answered Mr. Maguffin with feeling, “fo’ de law ob this yeah kintry I’se jess es good a man as yoh is.  So yoh jess keep yoh Samboo in yoh mouf atter this.  Specks yoh’se got a mighty low down name yohsef if t’was ony knowed by respeckable pussons.”

“My name, Mr. Julius Sneezer Disgustus Quackenboss, my name is Pawkins, great grandson of Hercules Leonidas Pawkins, as was briggidier ginral and aijicamp to George Washington, when he drummed the haousehold trooeps, and the hull o’ the derned British army, out’n Noo Yohk to the toon o’ ‘Yankee Doodle.’”

The constable turned pale, shivered all over, and swayed about in his chair, almost frightening the mendacious Yankee by the sight of the mischief his words had wrought.  Tryphena, however, quickly filled the shocked corporal a hot cup of tea, and mutely pressed him to drink it.  He took off the tea at a gulp, set down the cup with a steady hand, and, looking Mr. Pawkins in the face, said:  “I regret, sir, to have to say the word; but, sir, you are a liar.”

“That’s true as death, consterble,” remarked Timotheus, who did not share the hostile feelings of Sylvanus towards Corporal Rigby; “true as death, and the boys, they ducked him in the crick for’t, but they’s no washin’ the lies out’n his jaws.”

Mr. Pawkins looked as fierce as it was possible for a man with a merry twinkle in his eyes to look, and roared, “Consterble, did you mean that, or did you only say it fer fun like?”

Mr Rigby, glaring defiance, answered, “I meant it.”

“Oh waall,” responded the Yankee Canadian, mildly, “that’s all right; because I want you to know that I don’t allaow folks to joke with me that way.  If you meant it, that’s a different thing.”

“What your general character may be, I do not know.  As for your remarks on the British army, they are lies.”

“I guess, consterble, you ain’t up in the histry of the United States of Ameriky, or you’d know as your Ginral Clinton was drummed aout o’ Noo Yohk to the toon o’ ‘Yankee Doodle.’”

“I know, sir, that a mob of Hanoverians and Hessians, whom the Americans could not drive out, evacuated New York, in consequence of a treaty of peace.  If your general, as you call him, Washington, had the bad taste to play his ugly tune after them, it was just what might be expected from such a quarter.”

“My history,” said Tryphosa, “says that the American army was driven out of Canada by a few regulars and some French-Canadians at the same time.”