in Presbyterian theology in which both were deeply
interested, but they quickly changed it in deference to the younger and
lighter spirits about them. Harry had never before seen his general
in so mellow a vein. Perhaps it was the last blaze of the home-loving
spirit, before entering into that storm of battle which henceforth was
to be his without a break.

The general, under urging, told of his life as an orphan boy in his
uncle's rough home in the Virginia wilderness, how he had been seized
once by the wanderlust, then so strong in nearly all Americans, and
how he and his brother had gone all the way down the Ohio to the
Mississippi, where they had camped on a little swampy island, earning
their living by cutting wood for the steamers on the two rivers.

"How old were you two then, General?" asked Dr. Graham.

"The older of us was only twelve. But in those rough days boys matured
fast and became self-reliant at a very early age. We did not run away.
There wasn't much opposition to our going. Our uncle was sure that we'd
come back alive, and though we arrived again in Virginia, five or six
hundred miles from our island in the river, all rags and filled with
fever, we were not regarded as prodigal sons. It was what hundreds, yes,
thousands of other boys did. In our pleasant uplands we soon got rid of
both rags and fever."

"And you did not wish to return to the wilderness?"

"The temptation was strong at times, but it was defeated by other
ambitions. There was school and I liked sports. These soon filled up my
life."

Harry knew much more about the life of Jackson, which the modesty of his
hero kept him from telling. Looking at the strong, active figure of
the man so near him he knew that he had once been delicate, doomed in
childhood, as many thought, to consumption, inherited from his mother.
But a vigorous life in the open air had killed all such germs. He was a
leader in athletic sports. He was a great horseman, and often rode as
a jockey for his uncle in the horse races which the open-air Virginians
loved so well, and in which they indulged so much. He could cut down a
tree or run a saw-mill, or drive four horses to a wagon, or seek deer
through the mountains with the sturdiest hunter of them all. And upon
top of this vigorous boyhood had come the long and severe training at
West Point, the most thorough and effective military school the world
has ever known.

Harry did not wonder, as he looked at his gene