"General, do you know that I never was so happy before? I have so wanted to fight under the old flag. Jack," he turned to me, his face smiling, "Jack, I have come to see you for this purpose—I want you on my staff—I know the training you have had, I know the stuff that is in you. I want you, my boy. I’ve ridden ten miles to-night to tell you." "Tut—tut—Hawthorne—nonsense!" broke in the General. "Don’t start out making breaks like that. Jack is a good boy, but he is not a fighter—now, there’s Braxton Bragg—" "My grandfather is doubtless right, General Hawthorne," I said quietly. "I thank you from my heart for your kindness—but—" Eloise arose flushing, indignant. "Jack _is_ a fighter; a better fighter than some people who strut around in khaki, and make great pretense, but amount to nothing," she said deliberately and with emphasis. Then she came over and put one arm affectionately on my shoulder. "And General Rutherford," she went on, her voice trembling with anger, "I mean this for you, and I mean no disrespect; but it is cruel of you the way you have slurred Jack, and I almost doubt that you ever made the good fighting record you have, when I think how easily you can be fooled into taking a tin soldier for the real thing! I do, and now you know what _I_ think." Colonel Goff laughed, pleased. "You pinked him just right, Eloise. Been thinking I’d tell the General that myself—eh, General?" and he slapped the old man familiarly on the back. The old General answered testily, "Tut—tut—madam;" and then he laughed. "Gad, but I wish you were a man! Damned if _you_ wouldn’t fight!" *CHAPTER V* *PEDIGREES AND PRINCIPLES* My Aunt Lucretia undoubtedly was the real master of The Home Stretch. She ruled its thousand acres of low, rolling, blue grass land, which bore in pioneer days the canebrake and the poplar, and for a century had been the nursery of thoroughbreds. My Aunt lived and dreamed in pedigrees. Heaven, according to her, was a blue-grass meadow filled with pedigreed people, and hell—I remember how I had laughed when she said, "Why, Jack, if there is such a place, it’s a low jockey-yard filled with scrubs!"