a beeve, tie up one end, fill it full, tie up the other, and then curl it up like a snake in the top of his cap, bring it in the castle, and retail it to us at a usurious profit "per suck."

There also lived in the castle a frisky, laughing, handsome little woman, the wife of a sergeant. She hated to see the poor Texians suffer, and would smuggle it in a beeve's bladder, out of which many a time we have drank to "the glory, honour, and liberty of Texas."

On these occasions, under the pretence of looking after our washerwoman to get a light-coloured shirt, we would step in, and after giving her the "can't-come-it-judge," we were always answered by the pert little woman, first taking the forefinger of her [278] right hand, placing it under the right eye, and pulling down the skin until you could see the red of the ball. This meant, "Look out for the officers while I pour out of the bladder."

This good little woman had also a high opinion of our integrity: in her front room she kept for sale fancy articles upon her centre-table, which we would take up and examine with Yankee curiosity while she would be in the back room exhuming the bladder. Frequently, when she would return, after casting her eye quickly over the table to see that all was right, she would hold up both hands, with her pretty round face elongated into expressible surprise, exclaiming, at the same time, "What a very strange people you are! I can leave you here by yourselves, and you won't steal a thing. Why, I would not trust the governor here by himself!"

Our friend Dan, on these and similar occasions, would make himself useful. He, though a rare bird, was not after Ovid's description, "rara avis in terre, nigroque simillima cygno,"11 but was of the gayest plumage and the most eloquent discourse. Often, when he has made these good women cry by first translating and then singing the "Soldier's Tear," they would wipe away their tears and pity our sweethearts.

Dan was formerly a midshipman in the United States service, and attached to the Brandywine on the Pacific station, where he learned the language of these people; but, like several other brave and [279] generous spirits, he quitted that honourable service to fight for the liberty of our rising star. As midshipman, he had taken early lessons in the arts of the "Old Soldier." He was a proficient in raising a chew of tobacco, and sung himself into many a glass of vino; but his genius never showed the true intellect until he was ordered out to work.

One day at this rural sport of packing volcanic stones from the mountains was enough to satisfy his curiosity, and he wisely concluded that, inasmuch as he never put any of these stones on the mountains, "he would be shot if he took any away."

How was this to be avoided? He took a steel pen from my writing table in the corner, scratched his legs from his ankle to the knee, wrapped them around