The General, in fact, did not know any more of his guest than Julius knew. He had come on him only that afternoon at a fork in the road, resting, stretched out on a couple of fence-rails, while his horse nibbled and picked at the grass and leaves near by. The gray uniform, somewhat fresher than those the General was accustomed to, attracted the General’s attention, and when Captain McRaffle, as the stranger called himself, asked him the nearest way to Brutusville, or to some gentleman’s house, the General at once invited him to his home. He had heard, he stated, that a company of Yankees had already been sent to Brutusville; but he could show him the way to a house where gentlemen had lived in the past, and where, if he thought _he_ would pass muster, one was about to live again. And with this invitation Captain McRaffle became an inmate of Thornleigh, as the General’s place was called, and might have stayed there indefinitely had not unforeseen contingencies caused him to remove his quarters. Just as the General returned from his reception on the veranda, the old butler entered with a waiter and two juleps sparkling in their glasses. At sight of them the General beamed, and even the guest’s cold eyes lit up. “On my soul! he is the most remarkable fellow in the world,” declared the General to his visitor. “Where did you get this?” “Well, you see, suh,” said Julius, “de Yankees over yander was givin’ out rations, and I thought I’d git a few, so’s to be ready for you ’ginst you come.” The General smiled delightedly, and between the sips of his julep proceeded to extract from Julius all the news of the county since his last visit, a year or more before, and to give a running commentary of his own for the enlightenment of his guest, who, it must be said, appeared not quite as much interested in it all as he might have been. All the people on the place, Julius said, had been over to the court-house already to see the soldiers, but most of them had come back. He had been there himself one day, but had returned the same evening, as he would not leave the place unguarded at night. “The most faithful fellow that ever was on earth; he would die for me!” asserted the General, in a delighted aside to his guest, who received the encomium somewhat coldly, and on the first opportunity that he could do so unobserved, gave the old butler another of those looks that appeared like a flash of cold steel. Dr. Cary had been down the day before to inquire after the General.—“An old and valued friend of mine, the greatest surgeon in the State—ought to have been made Surgeon-General of the army,” interpolated the General to his guest. The Doctor had said the ladies were well, and were mighty anxious about the General—“Yes, sir, Miss Thomasia was very well, indeed.”