A devastating curiosity seized upon us boys concerning that Latin grammar, for we had discovered the nature of the book. Strong wanted to steal it one night, but concluded not to. “In the first place,” reflected Strong, “I haven't the heart to do it, and in the next place I have n't the moral courage. Quite So would placidly break every bone in my body.” And I believe Strong was not far out of the way. Sometimes I was vexed with myself for allowing this tall, simple-hearted country fellow to puzzle me so much. And yet, was he a simple-hearted country fellow? City bred he certainly was not; but his manner, in spite of his awkwardness, had an indescribable air of refinement. Now and then, too, he dropped a word or a phrase that showed his familiarity with unexpected lines of reading. “The other day,” said Curtis, with the slightest elevation of eyebrow, “he had the cheek to correct my Latin for me.” In short, Quite So was a daily problem to the members of Mess 6. Whenever he was absent, and Blakely and Curtis and Strong and I got together in the tent, we discussed him, evolving various theories to explain why he never wrote to anybody and why nobody ever wrote to him. Had the man committed some terrible crime, and fled to the army to hide his guilt? Blakely suggested that he must have murdered “the old folks.” What did he mean by eternally conning that tattered Latin grammar? And was his name Bladburn, anyhow? Even his imperturbable amiability became suspicious. And then his frightful reticence! If he was the victim of any deep grief or crushing calamity, why did n't he seem unhappy? What business had he to be cheerful? “It's my opinion,” said Strong, “that he 's a rival Wandering Jew; the original Jacobs, you know, was a dark fellow.” Blakely inferred from something Bladburn had said, or something he had not said--which was more likely--that he had been a schoolmaster at some period of his life. “Schoolmaster be hanged!” was Strong's comment. “Can you fancy a schoolmaster going about conjugating baby verbs out of a dratted little spelling-book? No, Quite So has evidently been a--a--Blest if I can imagine _what_ he 's been!” Whatever John Bladburn had been, he was a lonely man. Whenever I want a type of perfect human isolation, I shall think of him, as he was in those days, moving remote, self-contained, and alone in the midst of two hundred thousand men. II. The Indian summer, with its infinite beauty and tenderness, came like a reproach that year to Virginia. The foliage, touched here and there with prismatic tints, drooped motionless in the golden haze. The delicate Virginia creeper was almost minded to put forth its scarlet buds again. No wonder the lovely phantom--this dusky Southern sister of the pale Northern June--lingered not long with us, but, filling the once peaceful glens and valleys with her pathos, stole away rebukefully before the savage enginery of man.