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Captain de Peyster was come, and Tybee and I were taking our leave of the major, when there was a sudden commotion among the guards without, and a little man in black, his wig awry and his clothing torn by the rough man-handling of the sentries, burst into the tent. "Seize him! seize him! he is a rebel spy!" he shrieked, pointing at me.

Then more surgical man-handling, more jolting in freight cars this time a slow, miserable recovery, nurses who hated their patients and treated them as if they did, then, a prison camp, a German prison camp. Then horrors and starvation and brutality lasting many months. Then fever.

It was told in the woods that whisky flowed unchallenged in Buck Moncrossen's camps. His crews were known as hard crews; they "hired out for tough hands, and it was up to them to play their string out." But woe betide the man who allowed overindulgence to interfere with the morrow's work. Evil things were whispered of Moncrossen's man-handling of "hold-overs."

Douglass's escapade had in nowise affected his popularity among the resentful cattle owners who had been seriously involved by the outrage on the sheepman; the law of the range demands fair play and the feeling against Matlock was further intensified by a dastardly trick perpetrated by him a few days before Douglass's unceremonious man-handling of him.

When the hearing comes some of the parties to the affair may perchance divulge what lay at the bottom of the row. Any fine within the power of the court to impose is a mere bagatelle, compared to the distinction of scientifically man-handling four of society's finest in one afternoon. As one bystander remarked in the classic phraseology of the street: "Wagstaff's a bear!"

The nuisance about these trenches was that the point where one had to unload and proceed across country, man-handling everything, was abnormally far away from the firing line. We had about a mile and a half to do after we had marched collectively as a battalion, so that my machine-gunners were obliged to carry the guns and all the tackle we needed all that distance to their trenches.

There is no compunction about striking foul and very little about "double-teaming." Let us pause long enough to admit that this was the British and American way of man-handling, universal among the common people, until well into the nineteenth century and the mountaineers are still ignorant of any other, except fighting with weapons.

In such cases all the guard did was to unlock the door and walk away so as not to be a witness of what happened when half a dozen hall-men went inside and did a bit of man-handling. As regards the details of this man-handling I shall say nothing. And after all, man-handling was merely one of the very minor unprintable horrors of the Erie County Pen.

Once, in Newark, a rough of an employer had almost thrown her down the stairs, man-handling her, and while Marrin or his men would not do this, yet what method could she use to brave the two hundred and fifty people in the loft? She was quite alone, quite without any weapon save her tongue. To fail would be ridiculous and ignominious.

Someone, man-handling missiles for faster and more long-continued firing than any ship-designer ever expected, gasped, "Come on boys! Missiles for Mekin!" It became a joke, which seemed excruciatingly funny at the time. Nobody saw all the battle, or even a considerable part. There was a period when the Liberty, alone, fought like the deadliest of gadflies.