“You're right,” agreed the judge. “It's a dangerous thing, licker is--and a curse to some people. I'd like to have a dram right this minute. Lew, I wish mightily you'd come on and go home with me tonight and take supper. I'll send my nigger boy Jeff up to your house to tell your folks you won't be there until late, and you walk on out to my place with me. I feel sort of played out and lonesome--I do so. Come on now. We'll have a young chicken and a bait of hot waffles--I reckin that old nigger cook of mine does make the best waffles in the created world. After supper we'll set a spell together and talk over them old times when we were in the army--and maybe we can kind of forget some of the things that've come up later.” The noon accommodation would carry the delegation from Gideon K. Irons Camp over the branch line to the Junction, where it would connect with a special headed through for the reunion city. For the private use of the Camp the railroad company provided a car which the ladies of the town decorated on the night before with draped strips of red and white bunting down the sides, and little battle-flags nailed up over the two doors. The rush of the wind would soon whip away the little crossed flags from their tack fastenings end roll the bunting streamers up into the semblance of peppermint sticks; but the car, hitched to the tail end of the accommodation and surrounded by admiring groups of barelegged small boys, made a brave enough show when its intended passengers came marching down a good half hour ahead of leaving-time. Considering the wide swath which death and the infirmities of age had been cutting in the ranks all these years, the Camp was sending a good representation--Judge Priest, the commandant; and Doctor Lake; and Major Joe Sam Covington; and Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, who never missed a reunion; and Corporal Jake Smedley, the color-bearer, with the Camp's flag furled on its staff and borne under his arm; and Captain Shelby Woodward--and four or five more. There was even one avowed private. Also, and not to be overlooked on any account, there was Uncle Zach Matthews, an ink-black, wrinkled person, with a shiny bald head polished like old rosewood, and a pair of warped legs bent outward like saddlebows. Personally Uncle Zach was of an open mind regarding the merits and the outcome of the Big War. As he himself often put it: