"Why, yes," said the landlord. "He's a Yankee; and that lady you seen drivin' him around, she's a Yankee. He courted her here and he married her here. Major Jimmy Bass wanted him to marry her in his house, but Captain Jack Walthall put his foot down and said the weddin' had to be in _his_ house; and there's where it was, in that big white house over yander with the hip roof. Yes, sir." "Oh," said the commercial traveler, with a cynical smile, "he stayed down here to keep out of the army. He was a lucky fellow." "Well, I reckon he was lucky not to get killed," said the landlord, laughing. "He fought with the Yankees, and they do say that Little Compton was a rattler." The commercial traveler gave a long, low whistle, expressive of his profound astonishment. And yet, under all the circumstances, there was nothing to create astonishment. The lively little man had a history. Among the genial and popular citizens of Hillsborough, in the days before the war, none were more genial or more popular than Little Compton. He was popular with all classes, with old and with young, with whites and with blacks. He was sober, discreet, sympathetic, and generous. He was neither handsome nor magnetic. He was awkward and somewhat bashful, but his manners and his conversation had the rare merit of spontaneity. His sallow face was unrelieved by either mustache or whiskers, and his eyes were black and very small, but they glistened with good-humor and sociability. He was somewhat small in stature, and for that reason the young men about Hillsborough had given him the name of Little Compton. Little Compton's introduction to Hillsborough was not wholly without suggestive incidents. He made his appearance there in 1850, and opened a small grocery store. Thereupon the young men of the town, with nothing better to do than to seek such amusement as they could find in so small a community, promptly proceeded to make him the victim of their pranks and practical jokes. Little Compton's forbearance was wonderful. He laughed heartily when he found his modest signboard hanging over an adjacent barroom, and smiled good-humoredly when he found the sidewalk in front of his door barricaded with barrels and dry-goods boxes. An impatient man would have looked on these things as in the nature of indignities, but Little Compton was not an impatient man. This went on at odd intervals, until at last the fun-loving young men began to appreciate Little Compton's admirable temper; and then for a season they played their jokes on other citizens, leaving Little Compton entirely unmolested. These young men were boisterous, but good-natured, and they had their own ideas of what constituted fair play. They were ready to fight or to have fun, but in neither case would they willingly take what they considered a mean advantage of a man.