The general touched his cap and replied: “I had observed that fact, and I thank you very much. I beg to say that I will make an official report of the circumstance.” Two days later we all touched our caps to a freshly made brigadier-general of the engineers. The captain who had hesitated remained a captain. SI TUCKER--COWARD AND HERO I was in command of Fort Lamkin, a mortar fort, in rear of General Bushrod Johnson’s lines at Petersburg in 1864. The fort was named for our immediate commander, from whose command we had been detached for this service. One day Lamkin himself came to me when I was at his headquarters. He was obviously in trouble. “This boy, Si Tucker,” he said, “is the son of one of the best friends I ever had in the world. The boy is a coward. He literally _lives_ in a rat hole. I have repeatedly pulled him out by the legs, only to have him crawl back again the moment I let go of his ankles. I don’t know what to do. It’s my duty, of course, to prefer charges of cowardice against him; and if I do, he will certainly be shot--and his father is my best friend.” He paused meditatively, and then said with eagerness in his voice: “Why can’t you take him?” I agreed at once. I told him I would take the boy with me to my pits, and make “either a soldier or a stiff” out of him within the next twenty-four hours. I was under no obligations to his father; I had never even met any of his relatives, and I had seen too many years of service to have much patience with cowardice. The boy was sent for and ordered to go with me. We walked down towards Blandford church. At the proper point we turned out of the Jerusalem plank road across the fields towards Fort Lamkin. Half-way there and on the top of a little hill, which was especially exposed to the gaze of the sharp-shooters, I made Si Tucker sit down by my side. There we came to an understanding. I told him that he had been assigned to me to be shot out of hand, or to be court-martialled for cowardice, which at that particular juncture of the war meant very much the same thing. I explained to him that he was about to join a detachment, composed exclusively of men specially selected for their courage--every one of them a volunteer for what was deemed a peculiarly dangerous service. I explained further that I should require him to do his duty as they did theirs. “You have managed to make for yourself,” I said, “the reputation of a coward. You have now one last chance to redeem yourself. You must do that, or you must die.” The sharp-shooters were, in the meantime, picking at us most uncomfortably as we sat there. My experience as an old soldier strongly suggested to me that we ought to move. The position was of that kind that military men call untenable. Nevertheless, I thought it best to keep Si Tucker there a minute longer, for purposes of observation, if nothing else.