“I am,” answered Professor Reese; and at once he got on his feet, adjusted his spectacles just so, and drew from an inner breast pocket of his long frock coat a stained and frayed scroll, made of three sheets of tough parchment paper pasted end to end. He cleared his throat; and, as though the sound had been a command, his fellow members bent forward, with faces composed to earnestness. None observed how the stranger acted; indeed, he had been quite out of the picture and as good as forgotten for the better part of an hour. Certainly nobody was interested in him at this moment when there impended what, to that little group, was a profoundly solemn, highly sentimental thing. Again Professor Reese cleared his throat, then spoke the name that was written in faded letters at the top of the roll--the name of him who had been their first captain and, at the last, their brigade commander. “Died the death of a hero in an effort to save others at Cottonwood Bar, June 28, 1871,” said Judge Priest; and he saluted, with his finger against his forehead. One by one the old school-teacher called off the list of commissioned and noncommissioned officers. Squire Futrell, who had attained to the eminence of a second corporal's place, was the only one who answered for himself. For each of the others, including Lieutenant Garrett--he of the game leg and the plantation in Mississippi--somebody else answered, giving the manner and, if he remembered it, the date of that man's death. For, excepting Garrett, they were all dead. The professor descended to the roster of enlisted men: “Abner P. Ashbrook!” “Died in Camp Chase as a prisoner of war.” “G. W. Ayres!” “Killed at Baker's Creek.” “R. M. Bigger!” “Moved to Missouri after the war, was elected state senator, and died in '89.” “Reuben Brame!” “Honourably discharged after being wounded at Corinth, and disappeared. Believed to be dead.” “Robert Burnell!” “Murdered by bushwhackers in East Tennessee on his way home after the Surrender.” So it went down the long column of names. They were names, many of them, which once stood for something in that community but which would have fallen with an unfamiliar sound upon the ears of the oncoming generation--old family names of the old town. But the old families had died out or had scattered, as is the way with old families, and the names were only pronounced when Company B met or when some idler, dawdling about the cemetery, deciphered the lichen-grown lines on gray and crumbly grave-stones. Only once in a while did a voice respond, “Here!” But always the “Here!” was spoken clearly and loudly and at that, the remaining twelve would hoist their voices in a small cheer.