g limestone,
a land where the grass grows thick and long and does not die even in
winter.

"If one were superstitious," said Dick, "he could think it was a
punishment sent upon us all for fighting so much, and for killing so
many men about questions that lots of us don't understand, and that at
least could have been settled in some other way."

"It's easy enough to imagine it so," said Warner in his precise way,
"but after all, despite the reasons against it, here we are fighting and
killing one another with a persistence that has never been surpassed.
It's a perfectly simple question in mathematics. Let x equal the anger
of the South, let y equal the anger of the North, let 10 equal the
percentage of reason, 100, of course, being the whole, then you have x +
y + 10 equalling 100. The anger of the two sections is consequently x +
y, equalling 100 - 10, or 90. When anger constitutes 90 per cent., what
chance has reason, which is only 10 per cent., or one-ninth of anger?"

"No chance at all," replied Dick. "That has already been proved without
the aid of algebra. Here is a man in a cornfield signaling to us. I
wonder what he wants?"

As Dick spoke, Colonel Winchester, who had already noticed the man, gave
an order to stop. The stranger, bent and knotted by hard work on the
farm, hurried toward them. He leaned against the fence a moment, gasping
for breath, and then said:

"You're Union men, ain't you? It's no disguise?"

"Yes," replied Colonel Winchester, "we're Union men, and it's no
disguise that we're wearing, Malachi White. I've seen you several times
in Frankfort, selling hay."

The farmer, who had climbed upon the fence and who was sitting on the
top rail, hands on his knees, stared at him open-mouthed.

"You've got my name right. Malachi White it is," he said, "suah enough,
but I don't know yours. 'Pears to me, however, that they's somethin'
familiar about you. Mebbe it's the way you throw back your shoulders an'
look a fellow squah in the eyes."

Colonel Winchester smiled. No man is insensible to a compliment which is
obviously spontaneous.

"I spent a night once at your house, Mr. White," he said. "I was going
to Frankfort on horseback. I was overtaken at dusk by a storm and I
reached your place just in time. I remember that I slept on a mighty
soft feather bed, and ate a splendid breakfast in the morning."

Malachi White was not insensible to compliments either. He smiled, and
the smile which merel