Comprehension lit up the steamboat captain's face, but the light went out as he slapped his hand back to his hip pocket--and slapped it flat. “I knew I'd forgot something!” he lamented, despairingly. “Needin' one worse than I ever did in my whole life--and then I leave mine home in my other pants!” He shot the judge a look. The judge shook his head. “Son,” he said, “the circuit judge of the first judicial district of Kintucky don't tote such things.” Captain Buck Owings raised a clenched fist to the blue sky above and swore impotently. For the third time the grandstand crowd was starting its roar. Judge Priest's head began to waggle with little sidewise motions. Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, late of King's Hell hounds, rambled with weaving indirectness round the corner of the grandstand not twenty feet from them. His gangrened cartridge-box was trying to climb up over his left shoulder from behind, his eyes were heavy with a warm and comforting drowsiness, and his Springfield's iron butt-plate was scurfing up the dust a yard behind him as he hauled the musket along by the muzzle. The judge saw him first; but, even as he spoke and pointed, Captain Buck Owings caught the meaning and jumped. There was a swirl of arms and legs as they struck, and Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, sorely shocked, staggered back against the wall with a loud grunt of surprise and indignation. Half a second later, side by side, Captain Buck Owings and Judge Priest's Jeff sped northward across the earth, and Sergeant Jimmy Bagby staggered toward the only comforter near at hand, with his two empty arms upraised. Filled with a great and sudden sense of loss he fell upon Judge Priest's neck, almost bearing his commander down by the weight of his grief. “Carried her four years!” he exclaimed piteously; “four endurin' years, Judge, and not a single dam' Yankee ever laid his hand on her! Carried her ever since, and nobody ever dared to touch her! And now to lose her this away!” His voice, which had risen to a bleat, sank to a sob and he wept unrestrainedly on the old judge's shoulder. It looked as though these two old men were wrestling together, catch-as-catch-can. The judge tried to shake his distressed friend off, but the sergeant clung fast. Over the bent shoulders of the other the judge saw the wheels flash by, going south, horses and drivers evened up. The “Go!” of the starting judge was instantly caught up by five hundred spectators and swallowed in a crackling yell. Oblivious of all these things the sergeant raised his sorrowing head and a melancholy satisfaction shone through his tears. “I lost her,” he said; “but, by gum, Judge, it took all four of 'em to git her away from me, didn't it?”