e. They had partaken abundantly of a bountiful
breakfast, and as they satisfied their inner man from a table groaning
with good things prepared by the fair hands of the gentler sex, the
gallant men rose with song and cheer, and went on their happy way
where duty and honour called them."

But the women who scraped the plates that morning knew the truth. One
wonders how much of history would be thrown out as worthless, like
Martin Culpepper's fine writing, if the women who scraped the plates
might testify. For those "large white plumes" do not dance in women's
eyes!

After breakfast the men tumbled into the wagons, and as one wagon
after another rattled out of Fernald's feed lot and came down the
street, the men waved their hats and the women waved their aprons, and
a great cloud of dust rose on the highway, and as the wagons ducked
down the bank to the river, only the tall figure of Martin Culpepper,
waving his handkerchief, rose above the cloud. At the end of the line
was a provision wagon, and on it rode Philemon Ward--Yankee in his
greatest moment, scorning the heroic place in the van, and looking
after the substantials. In the feed lot, just as the reins were in his
hands, Ward saw Elmer Hendricks' foot peeping from under a saddle.
Ward dragged the boy out, spanking him as he came over the end gate,
and noted the sheepish smile on his face. Ten days later, as Ward,
marching in the infantry, was going up a hill through the timber at
the battle of Wilson's Creek, that same boy rode by with the cavalry,
and seeing Ward, waved a carbine and smiled as he charged the brow of
the hill. That night, going back under the stars, Ward stumbled over a
body, and stooping, saw the smile still on the boy's face, and the
carbine clutched in his hand. But for the hole through the boyish
brow, the eyes might still have been laughing.

CHAPTER III

A few years ago, in the room of the great mahogany table, with its
clean blotting pad, its writing tablet, and its superb rose rising
from a green vase in the midst of the shining unlittered expanse,
there was a plain, heavy mahogany wainscoting reaching chin-high to
the average man. A few soft-toned pictures adorned the dull gray walls
above the wainscoting, and directly over a massive desk that never was
seen open hung a framed letter. The letter was written on blue-lined
paper in red pokeberry ink. At the top of the letter was the
advertisement of a hotel, done in quaint, old-