Old Hines Court-Martialed.
While in winter quarters, near
Bowling Green,
Caroline county, ‘Old Hines’ was court-martialed.
When Christmas day dawned upon us ‘Old Hines’ was missing.
No one could tell when or whither he had gone; his plunder had vanished, too. Some said his mess-mates had killed him in revenge for dancing out the fire and for washing his face in the bread-tray, which was one of his amusements; others said he had deserted.
Several days elapsed and no tidings of the lost one.
At length word came from
Bowling Green that ‘Old Hines’ had rented the best room in the hotel there, and was living like a lord.
A guard was dispatched for him, and he was found in his room in the hotel, seated before a roaring fire with
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a bottle of
apple brandy on one side and a box of cigars on the other.
This was too much for a Confederate soldier—even for ‘Old Hines.’
He was marched back to camp under the guard.
In a few days he was hauled up before a court-martial then sitting.
Major Henry S. Carter, a tobacconist, now of our city, then an officer of the Third Howitzers, was one of the court.
Charges and specifications having been preferred, ‘Old Hines’ arose, and with a wave of the hand, said: ‘Gemmen, I don't make no practice of leaving camp, but I allus keeps Christmas—I allus does.’
This was the longest speech ‘Old Hines’ had ever been known to make, and it electrified the court.
He was sentenced to remain in camp one week, and wear suspended around his neck a board on which was written, ‘Absent from the camp without leave.’
It so happened that the very next day, when the sentence was to go into effect, the battery received marching orders, and ‘Old Hines’ and the sentence were forgotten.
After marching about five miles, ‘Old Hines,’ bringing up the rear with his plunder, he suddenly stopped and remarked, ‘I'll be durned if I ain't forgot that thing them gemmen give me,’ wheeling around he trudged back to camp for his board, which he wore suspended from his neck for six months or more, apparently delighted.
