When they had
buried him, that day, in Sharpsburg, no one, suspected of Southern
sympathies, could venture openly to appear. From all that I could learn,
the authors of that butchery were not Confederate soldiers, or even
guerrillas, but purely and simply horse-thieves, who had come over with
the sole object of plunder, tempted by the enormous prices that
horse-flesh could then command in Virginia.
Very early the next morning I had a visit from the Irishman, who lived
hard by. Things did not look less gloomy when I had heard what he had to
tell. To begin with, that unlucky tongue of Alick's had been doing all
sorts of mischief. He never touched strong liquors, so there was not
even that excuse for his imprudence. Instead of remaining quiet in the
secluded retreat to which he had been, sent, he would persist in hanging
about in the immediate neighborhood of Boonesborough, and appeared to
have spoken freely about our projects, greatly exalting and exaggerating
their importance; indeed, he could scarcely have said more if we had
been traveling as accredited agents between two belligerent powers. Such
vainglorious garrulity was not only intensely provoking, but involved
real peril to all parties concerned. I thought the Irishman was
perfectly right in taking that blundering bull by the horns, and acting
decisively on his own responsibility, inasmuch as there was no time to
communicate with me.
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