on the drum, marched boldly up to the gate and into the yard.  A desperate cunning came to my aid.  I flung away the torch, leaving the head of the column in darkness, broke from Mr. Handy’s embrace, and, seizing Nick by the arm, led him onward through the premises, he drumming with great docility.  Followed by a few stragglers only (some of whom went down in contact with the trees of the orchard), we came to a gate at the back which I knew well, which led directly into the little yard that fronted my own rooms behind Mr. Crede’s store.  Pulling Nick through the gate, I slammed it, and he was only beginning to protest when I had him safe within my door, and the bolt slipped behind him.  As I struck a light something fell to the floor with a crash, an odor of alcohol filled the air, and as the candle caught the flame I saw a shattered whiskey bottle at my feet and a room which had been given over to carousing.  In spite of my feelings I could not but laugh at the perfectly irresistible figure my cousin made, as he stood before me with the drum slung in front of him.  His hat was gone, his dust-covered clothes awry, but he smiled at me benignly and without a trace of surprise.

“Sho you’ve come back at lasht, Davy,” he said.  “You’re—­you’re very—­irregular.  You’ll lose—­law bishness.  Y-you’re worse’n Andy Jackson—­he’s always fightin’.”

I relieved him, unprotesting, of the drum, thanking my stars there was so much as a stick left of it.  He watched me with a silent and exaggerated interest as I laid it on the table.  From a distance without came the shouts of the survivors making for the tavern.

“’Sfortunate you had the drum, Davy,” he said gravely, “’rwe’d had no procession.”

“It is fortunate I have it now,” I answered, looking ruefully at the battered rim where Nick had missed the skin in his ardor.

“Davy,” said he, “funny thing—­I didn’t know you wash a Jacobite.  Sh’ou hear,” he added relevantly, “th’ Andy Jackson was married?”

“No,” I answered, having no great interest in Mr. Jackson.  “Where have you been seeing him again?”

“Nashville on Cumberland.  Jackson’sh county sholicitor,—­devil of a man.  I’ll tell you, Davy,” he continued, laying an uncertain hand on my shoulder and speaking with great earnestness, “I had Chicashaw horse—­Jackson’d Virginia thoroughbred—­had a race—­’n’ Jackson wanted to shoot me ‘n’ I wanted to shoot Jackson.  ‘N’ then we all went to the Red Heifer—­”

“What the deuce is the Red Heifer?” I asked.

“’N’dishtillery over a shpring, ‘n’ they blow a horn when the liquor runsh.  ‘N’ then we had supper in Major Lewish’s tavern.  Major Lewis came in with roast pig on platter.  You know roast pig, Davy? . . .  ‘N’ Jackson pulls out’s hunting knife n’waves it very mashestic. . . .  You know how mashestic Jackson is when he—­wantshtobe?” He let go my shoulder, brushed back his hair in a fiery manner, and, seizing a knife which unhappily lay on the table, gave me a graphic illustration of Mr. Jackson about to carve the pig, I retreating, and he coming on.  “N’ when he stuck the pig, Davy,—­”