“Well, that I don't know,” admitted the old judge. “You see, son, I'm gettin' on in years, considerably; and it's sort of a hard trip from away down where I live plum' up here to New York. As a matter of fact,” he went on, “this was the third time in my life that I started for this section of the country. The first time I started was with General Albert Sidney Johnston and a lot of others; but, owin' to meetin' up with your General Grant at a place called Pittsburg Landing by your people and Shiloh by ours, we sort of altered our plans. Later on I started again, bein' then temporarily in the company of General John Morgan, of my own state; and that time we got as far as the southern part of the state of Ohio before we run into certain insurmountable obstacles; but this time I managed to git through. I was forty-odd years doin' it--but I done it! And, son,” he called out as the ferryboat began to quiver and Malley stepped ashore, “I don't mind tellin' you in strict confidence that while the third Confederate invasion of the North was a long time gittin' under way, it proved a most complete success in every particular when it did. Give my best reguards to Miss Margaret Movine.” VIII. THE MOB FROM MASSAC YOU might call it a tragedy--this thing that came to pass down in our country here a few years back. For that was exactly what it was--a tragedy, and in its way a big one. Yet at the time nobody thought of calling it by any name at all. It was just one of those shifts that are inevitably bound to occur in the local politics of a county or a district; and when it did come, and was through and over with, most people accepted it as a matter of course. There were some, however, it left jarred and dazed and bewildered--yes, and helpless too; men too old to readjust their altered fortunes to their altered conditions even if they had the spirit to try, which they hadn't. Take old Major J. Q. A. Pickett now. Attaching himself firmly to a certain spot at the far end of Sherrill's bar, with one leg hooked up over the brass bar-rail--a leg providentially foreshortened by a Minie ball at Shiloh, as if for that very purpose--the major expeditiously drank himself to death in a little less than four years, which was an exceedingly short time for the job, seeing he had always been a most hale and hearty old person, though grown a bit gnarly and skewed with the coming on of age. The major had been county clerk ever since Reconstruction; he was a gentleman and a scholar and could quote Latin and Sir Walter Scott's poetry by the running yard. Toward the last he quoted them with hiccups and a stutter.