"Can I see the General, gentlemen?" asked Desmit, with a growing
feeling that he had taken the wrong course to accomplish his end.
The crowd of "bummers" constantly grew larger. They were mounted
upon horses and mules, jacks and jennets, and one of them had put
a "McClellan saddle" and a gag-bit upon one of the black polled cattle
which abound in that region, and which ambled easily and briskly
along with his rider's feet just brushing the low "poverty-pines"
which grew by the roadside. They wore all sorts of clothing. The
blue and the gray were already peacefully intermixed in the garments
of most of them. The most grotesque variety prevailed especially
in their head-gear, which culminated in the case of one who wore a
long, barrel-shaped, slatted sun-bonnet made out of spotted calico.
They were boisterous and even amusing, had they not been well
armed and apparently without fear or reverence for any authority or
individual. For the present, the Irishman was evidently in command,
by virtue of his witty tongue.

"Can ye see the Gineral, Kurnel?" said he, with the utmost apparent
deference; "av coorse ye can, sir, only it'll be necessary for you
to lave your carriage an' the horses and the nagur here in the care
of these gintlemen, while I takes ye to the Gineral mesilf."

"Why can I not drive on?"

"Why can't ye dhrive? Is it a Kurnel ye is, an' don't know that?
Shure the cavalry an' the arthillery an' the caysons an' one thing
an' another of that kind would soon crush a chayriot like that to
flinders, ye know."

"I cannot leave my carriage," said Desmit.