yeoman. And, by the way,' he says, 'you've disappointed me groom pretty
bad.'

"'Where does your groom come in?' I said.

"'Oh, he was the yeoman. He's a dam poor groom,' says my captain, 'but
he's a way-up barrister when he's at home. He's been running around the
camp with his tongue out, waiting for the chance of defending you at the
court-martial.'

"'What court-martial?' I says.

"'On you as a deserter from the Artillery. You'd have had a good run for
your money. Anyway, you'd never have been hung after the way you worked
your gun. Deserter ten times over,' he says, 'I'd have stuck out for
shooting you like a gentleman.'

"Well, Sir, right there it struck me at the pit of my stomach--sort of
sickish, sweetish feeling--that my position needed regularising pretty
bad. I ought to have been a naturalised burgher of a year's standing; but
Ohio's my State, and I wouldn't have gone back on her for a desertful of
Dutchmen. That and my enthoosiasm as an inventor had led me to the
existing crisis; but I couldn't expect this Captain Mankeltow to regard
the proposition that way. There I sat, the rankest breed of
unreconstructed American citizen, caught red-handed squirting hell at the
British Army for months on end. I tell _you_, Sir, I wished I was in
Cincinnatah that summer evening. I'd have compromised on Brooklyn.

"'What d'you do about aliens?' I said, and the dirt I'd coughed up seemed
all back of my tongue again.