Dolley and two of his friends were mounted; the
soldiers kept pace with us gallantly on foot.
When we started, I bore no sort of malice to that same Dolley; but,
before we had got through the twenty-three miles that brought us to New
Creek, I hated him intensely, as one hates the man--friend or foe--that
bores you to death's door. That he should be puffed up with vainglory,
was neither unlikely nor unreasonable. His own shots were the only ones
he had ever seen fired in anger. It was natural, too, that he should
over-estimate the importance of his capture; he had suffered from the
war, in purse, if not in person, and had lost two sons in the Northern
army from disease, one of whom had been imprisoned for six months by the
Confederates. After his first excitement had passed away, he bore
himself not unkindly towards me; though, at Greenland, he did greatly
bewail the darkness that had caused him to take a costly life instead of
a worthless one; Falcon would have fetched five hundred dollars in those
parts; even at my own valuation, _I_ could not have been appraised so
highly. So I listened to him twice or thrice with great patience, while
he told how well he had deserved of his country; but, when he persisted
in repeating the same tale, not only to me, but to every creature he
encountered, the iteration became simply "damnable.
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