Page:The gold brick (1910).djvu/221

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under their shaggy brows. "Present my compliments to Senator Warren, and tell him that if he ever presumes to speak to me again in all his life, I'll slap his face, and if he resents it, I'll kill him."

Ford tried to bow, and the colonel, turning to Carroll, said:

"As I was saying, General Palmer happened to go into the adjutant-general's office and saw Grant smoking a corn-cob pipe and working away on muster rolls at a broken table propped up in one corner of the room. The old forage cap he had worn in the Mexican War was lying on the table. It was the only hat he had in those days."

The next morning an interview with Warren appeared in all the papers.

"I would prefer," the senator was reported as saying, "to retire to private life and resume my interrupted law practice, if I were not compelled to seek vindication by the bushwhacking of this doting old ingrate, who, disappointed in his attempts to monopolize patronage that belongs to patriotic party workers, now skulks behind the sympathy his years and infirmities excite, to wage a guerrilla warfare."

The colonel read the interview at breakfast. He