Three or four days later, for I never could keep tab on time at that period of the war, we went into the battle at Farmville. Goodsmith was in his place in command of the piece. Just before fire opened he beckoned to me and I rode up to hear what he had to say. “I’m going to be killed, I think,” he said. “If I am, I want my wife to know that she is the widow of a--_brave man_. I want her to know that I did my duty to the last. And--and if you live long enough, and this thing don’t kill Mary--I want you to tell the _little one_ about his father.” Goodsmith’s premonition of his death was one of many that were fulfilled during the war. A moment later a fearful struggle began. At the first fire George Goodsmith’s wife became the “widow of a brave man.” His body was heavy with lead. His son, then unborn, is now a successful broker in a great city. There is nothing particularly knightly or heroic about him, for this is not a knightly or heroic age. But he takes very tender care of his mother--that “widow of a brave man.” AN INCOMPLETE STORY When General Field came to Cairo, Illinois, after the war, I welcomed him with especial heartiness. I was a little bit lonely, lacking comrades in sympathy with me. General Field had been my drillmaster at Ashland, at the war’s beginning. Later, after he became a great general, I had many times been of his following in raids and scouts, and other military expeditions. Like all the rest of us at the end of the war, General Field was very poor. He had come to Cairo to engage in business, and had not been able to bring his family with him. So he rented a bachelor room in the bank building in which my office was situated, and we two used to spend the evenings together in front of my office fire. At that time General Don Carlos Buell was operating a coal mine in Kentucky, some distance up the Ohio River. He sold his coal through the commission house for which I was attorney. When he came to Cairo, he, also, usually spent his evenings in my office. One evening General Field was smoking a long pipe before my fire, and he and I were chatting about war times--we hadn’t yet got far enough away from the war to regard any other topic as worthy of intelligent conversation. “The saddest part of it all, to us of the old army at least,” said General Field, “is the breaking up of old friendships. There’s Buell, now. He and I once tented together, messed together, slept under the same blankets together, and, without any blankets at all, under the same frozen sky; marched together, fought together, suffered together, and endured together. Once we thought of each other as brothers might. Now, if we should meet, he would refuse even to shake my hand. He would regard me as a rebel--to him _anathema maranatha_.” At this moment came a knock at the door. I opened it, and to my consternation there stood General Buell.