There were still two men unheard from in the experience meeting. Some one of us called upon them for an expression of opinion. “I donno. I never thought,” said one. “Nuther did I,” said the other. “Of course you didn’t,” said Joe. Then the postscript philosopher, rising and stretching himself, remarked: “I reckon that if any man goes into a fight without being scared, that man is drunk or crazy.” Then we all lay down and went to sleep. AN UNFINISHED FIGHT Jack Swan was the best swordsman in the regiment--probably the best in the army. Jack was a Marylander, who came south singing “My Maryland,” and heartily believing in the assertion of that song that “She breathes, she burns, she’ll come, she’ll come, Maryland, my Maryland!” Like most men from border states he represented a house divided against itself. In his case the division was peculiarly distressing. He was an enthusiastic Southerner. His twin brother was an equally enthusiastic Union man. The one was in the one army as a matter of conscience, and the other in the other for precisely the same reason. It was always a grief to Jack that this separation had come between him and the curly-headed twin brother, with whom he had slept in infancy, and who had been his comrade until that terrible fratricidal war had parted them. He used to talk with us about it around the camp-fire, and was especially sad over it when any of us managed to get off for a day or a week to visit our homes. His home was beyond the lines; and in all that country for which he was fighting there was no human being whom he could call kin. He had this comfort, however, that his brother and he were never likely to meet in the conflict of arms. For to avoid that the brother had betaken himself to the West and was serving in Mississippi. But there was always the terrible chance that in the shifting of troops they two might some day, unknown to each other, be fighting on opposite sides of the same field. That, in fact, is what happened at Brandy Station, and it happened more dramatically than either of the brothers had anticipated. The conflict at Brandy Station was perhaps the greatest cavalry fight of the war. It was the one contest in which large bodies of armed and trained horsemen, under the greatest cavalry leaders on either side, met fairly in conflict with little or no interference from troops of other arms. It was the only contest of the kind, so far as I know, in which highly expert swordsmen met each other fairly in single combat. There was on both sides a chivalric feeling akin to that of the “knights of old,” which prompted men not to interfere when two well-matched cavaliers met each other with naked blades. Jack Swan was naturally eager for a fray of this sort. He knew and mightily rejoiced in his superb skill with the sabre. He watched anxiously for his opportunity. Presently it came.