of
everybody, line and field. Nobody in the Old Tenth grumbled. They saw
that he knew his biz. I know _all_ about him. What'll you bet?"

"I'm not a betting man, Lieutenant, except in a friendly game of poker,"
sighed Old Grumps. "You don't know anything about your Brigadier," he
added in a sepulchral murmur, the echo of an empty canteen. "I have only
been in this brigade a month, and I know more than you do, far, very far
more, sorry to say it. He's a reformed clergyman. He's an apostatized
minister." The Colonel's voice as he said this was solemn and sad enough
to do credit to an undertaker. "It's a bad sort, Wallis," he continued,
after another deep sigh, a very highly perfumed one, the sigh of a
barkeeper. "When a clergyman falls, he falls for life and eternity,
like a woman or an angel. I never knew a backslidden shepherd to come
to good. Sooner or later he always goes to the devil, and takes down
whomsoever hangs to him."

"He'll take down the Old Tenth, then," asserted Wallis. "It hangs to
him. Bet you two to one he takes it along."

"You're right, Adjutant; spoken like a soldier," swore Gildersleeve,
"And the Bloody Fourteenth, too. It will march into the burning pit as
far as any regiment; and the whole brigade, yes, sir! But a backslidden
shepherd, my God! Have we come to that? I often say to myself, in the
solemn hours of the night, as I remember my Sabbath-school days, 'Great
Scott! have we come to that?' A reformed clergyman! An apostatized
minister! Think of it, Wallis, think of it! Why, sir, his very wife ran
away from him. They had but just buried their first boy," pursued Old
Grumps, his hoarse voice sinking to a whimper. "They drove home from the
burial-place, where lay the new-made grave. Arrived at their door, _he_
got out and extended his hand to help _her_ out. Instead of accepting,
instead of throwing herself into his arms and weeping there, she turned
to the coachman and said, 'Driver, drive me to my father's house.' That
was the end of their wedded life, Wallis."

The Colonel actually wept at this point, and the maudlin tears were not
altogether insincere. His own wife and children he heartily loved, and
remembered them now with honest tenderness. At home he was not a drinker
and a rough; only amid the hardships and perils of the field.

"That was the end of it, Wallis," he repeated. "And what was it while it
lasted? What does a woman leave her husband for? Why does she separate
from him o