drawn saber. Thurston
saw him coming, drew himself up to his full height, and again folded his
arms. He was too brave to retreat before the word, and my uncivil words
had disarmed him. He was a spectator. Another moment and he would have
been split like a mackerel, but a blessed bullet tumbled his assailant
into the dusty road so near that the impetus sent the body rolling to
Thurston's feet. That evening, while platting my hasty survey, I found
time to frame an apology, which I think took the rude, primitive form of
a confession that I had spoken like a malicious idiot.

A few weeks later a part of our army made an assault upon the enemy's
left. The attack, which was made upon an unknown position and across
unfamiliar ground, was led by our brigade. The ground was so broken and
the underbrush so thick that all mounted officers and men were compelled
to fight on foot--the brigade commander and his staff included. In the
_melee_ Thurston was parted from the rest of us, and we found him,
horribly wounded, only when we had taken the enemy's last defense. He
was some months in hospital at Nashville, Tennessee, but finally
rejoined us. He said little about his misadventure, except that he had
been bewildered and had strayed into the enemy's lines and been shot
down; but from one of his captors, whom we in turn had captured, we
learned the particulars. "He came walking right upon us as we lay in
line," said this man. "A whole company of us instantly sprang up and
leveled our rifles at his breast, some of them almost touching him.
'Throw down that sword and surrender, you damned Yank!' shouted some one
in authority. The fellow ran his eyes along the line of rifle barrels,
folded his arms across his breast, his right hand still clutching his
sword, and deliberately replied, 'I will not.' If we had all fired he
would have been torn to shreds. Some of us didn't. I didn't, for one;
nothing could have induced me."

When one is tranquilly looking death in the eye and refusing him any
concession one naturally has a good opinion of one's self. I don't know
if it was this feeling that in Thurston found expression in a stiffish
attitude and folded arms; at the mess table one day, in his absence,
another explanation was suggested by our quartermaster, an irreclaimable
stammerer when the wine was in: "It's h--is w--ay of m-m-mastering a
c-c-consti-t-tu-tional t-tendency to r--un aw--ay."

"What!" I flamed out, indignantly rising; "you