ome true, 'cause I feel it
so strong."
"There ought to be a general law forbidding a man with a young wife and
baby to go to a war," said Harry.
"But they ain't no sich law," said Dick Jones, in his optimistic tone,
"an' so we needn't worry 'bout it. But if you two gen'rals should happen
along through the mountains uv western No'th Calliny after the war I'd
like fur you to come to my cabin, an' see Mary an' the baby an' me.
Our cove is named Jones' Cove, after my father, an' the branch that runs
through it runs into Jones' Creek, an' Jones' Creek runs into the Yadkin
River an' our county is Yadkin. Oh, you could find it plumb easy,
if two sich great gen'rals as you wuzn't ashamed to eat sweet pertaters
an' ham an' turkey an' co'n pone with a wagon driver like me."
Harry saw, despite his playful method of calling them generals, that he
was thoroughly in earnest, and he was more moved than he would have been
willing to confess.
"Too proud!" he said. "Why, we'd be glad!"
"Mebbe your road will lead that way," said Jones. "An' ef you do,
jest remember that the skillet's on the fire, an' the latch string is
hangin' outside the do'."
The allusion to the mountains made Harry's mind travel far back, over
an almost interminable space of time now, it seemed, when he was yet a
novice in war, to the home of Sam Jarvis, deep in the Kentucky mountains,
and the old, old woman who had said to him as he left: "You will come
again, and you will be thin and pale, and in rags, and you will fall at
the door. I see you coming with these two eyes of mine."
A little shiver passed over him. He knew that no one could penetrate
the future, but he shivered nevertheless, and he found himself saying
mechanically:
"It's likely that I'll return through the mountains, and if so I'll look
you up at that home in the cove on the brook that runs into Jones' Creek."
"That bein' settled," said Jones, "what do you gen'rals reckon to do jest
now, after havin' finished your big sleep?"
"Your wagon is about to lose the first two passengers it has ever
carried," replied Harry. "Orderlies have our horses somewhere. We
belong on the staff of General Lee."
"An' you see him an' hear him talk every day? Some people are pow'ful
lucky. I guess you'll say a lot about it when you're old men."
"We're going to say a lot about it while we're young men. Good-by,
Mr. Jones. We've been in some good hotels, but we never slept better
in any o
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