We left the car in company, he and I, at the end of the route, and pretty soon it transpired that he was an old Union soldier, of Massachusetts parentage, but born in Canada and a member of a Michigan regiment. Just how these autobiographical details came to be mentioned I fail now to remember, but in that country, where so much history had been made, it was hard to keep the past out of one's conversation. He had been in Sheridan's force when it stormed Missionary Ridge. As they went up the heights, he said, they were between two fires; as much in danger from Federal bullets as from Confederate; "but Sheridan kept right on." An old woman who lived on the Ridge told him that she asked General Bragg if the Yankees would take the hill. "Take the hill!" said Bragg; "they could as well fly." Just then she saw the blue-coats coming, and pointed them out to the General. He looked at them, put spurs to his horse, "and," added the woman, "I ain't seen him since." All of which, for aught I know, may be true. The talkative veteran was now on his way to find an old friend of his who lived somewhere around here, he didn't know just where; and as my course lay in the same general direction we went across lots and up the hill together, he rehearsing the past, and I gladly putting myself to school. In my time history was studied from text-books; but the lecture system is better. By and by we approached a solitary cabin, on the dilapidated piazza of which sat the very man for whom my companion was looking. "Very sick to-day," he said, in response to a greeting. His appearance harmonized with his words,--and with the piazza; and his manners were pitched on the same key; so that it was in a downright surly tone that he pointed out a gate through which I could make an exit toward the woods on the other side of the house. I had asked the way, and was glad to take it. Not that I was greatly offended. A sick man on one of his bad days has some excuse for a little impatience; a far better excuse than I should have for alluding to the matter at this late date, if I did not improve the occasion to add that this was the only bit of anything like incivility that I have ever received at the South, where I have certainly not been slow to ask questions of all sorts of people.