General Legaie offered to make a place on his staff for Jacquelin; but Jacquelin declined it. He wished to go into the Red Rock troop, of which Steve Allen was now Captain. “Because, mamma, all the men are in it, and Steve has refused a majority to stay with them, and there must be one of the Grays in the old company,” he said with a rise of his head. Doan, of course, expected to go with his master; but Mrs. Gray vetoed this; she was afraid Doan might be killed: young men were so rash. She remembered that Doan was his mother’s only son. So, by a compromise, Old Waverley was sent. He had so much judgment, she said. The year after Jacquelin went away to the army the tide of war rolled nearer to the old county, and the next year, that which had been deemed impossible befell: it swept over it. When the invading army had passed, the county was scarcely recognizable. Jacquelin’s career in the army was only that of many others—indeed, of many thousands of others: he went in a boy, but a boy who could ride any horse, and all day and all night; sleep on stones or in mud; and if told to go anywhere, would go as firmly and as surely among bayonets or belching guns as if it were in a garden of roses. Being the youngest man in his company, he might naturally have been a favorite in any case; but when he was always ready to stand an extra tour of guard-duty, or to do anything else for a comrade, it placed his popularity beyond question. They used to call him “The baby;” but after a sharp cavalry fight on a hill-top one afternoon they stopped this. Legaie’s brigade charged, and finding infantry entrenched, were retiring amid smoke and dust and bullets, when Jacquelin, missing Morris Cary, who had been near him but a moment before, suddenly turned and galloped back through the smoke. Two or three men shouted and stopped, and Steve suddenly dashed back after the boy, followed by Andy Stamper and the whole company. There was a rally with the whole Red Rock troop in the lead, Steve Allen, with little Andy Stamper close behind, shouting and sabering like mad, which changed the fortune of the day. Poor Morris was found under his horse, past help; but they brought his body out of the fray, and Jacquelin sent him home, with a letter which was harder to write than any charge he had ever made or was to make—harder even than to tell Dr. Cary, who was at the field hospital and who received the announcement with only a sudden tightening of the mouth and whitening of the face. After that, Andy Stamper “allowed that Jacquelin’s cradle was big enough for him” (Andy), which it certainly was, by linear measurement, at least. Blair’s letter to Jacquelin in reply was more to him than General Legaie’s mention of his name in his report.