The boy worked, the world rolled round, and twelve years later Governor Dennison offered him command of a regiment. He went home, opened his mother's Bible, and pondered upon the subject. He had a wife, a child, and a few thousand dollars. If he gave his life to the country, would God and the few thousand dollars provide for his wife and child? He consulted the Book about it. It seemed to answer in the affirmative; and before morning he wrote to a friend,--"I regard my life as given to the country. I am only anxious to make as much of it as possible before the mortgage on it is foreclosed." To this man, who thus went into the war with a life not his own, was given, on the 16th of December, 1861, command of the little army which held Kentucky to her moorings in the Union. He knew nothing of war beyond its fundamental principles,--which are, I believe, that a big boy can whip a little boy, and that one big boy can whip two little boys, if he take them singly, one after the other. He knew no more about it; yet he was called upon to solve a military problem which has puzzled the heads of the greatest generals: namely, how two small bodies of men, stationed widely apart, can unite in the presence of an enemy, and beat him, when he is of twice their united strength, and strongly posted behind intrenchments. With the help of many "good men and true," he solved this problem; and in telling how he solved it, I shall come naturally to speak of John Jordan, from the head of Baine. Humphrey Marshall with five thousand men had invaded Kentucky. Entering it at Pound Gap, he had fortified a strong natural position near Paintville, and, with small bands, was overrunning the whole Piedmont region. This region, containing an area larger than the whole of Massachusetts, was occupied by about four thousand blacks and one hundred thousand whites,--a brave, hardy, rural population, with few schools, scarcely any churches, and only one newspaper, but with that sort of patriotism which grows among mountains and clings to its barren hillsides as if they were the greenest spots in the universe. Among this simple people Marshall was scattering firebrands. Stump-orators were blazing away at every cross-road, lighting a fire which threatened to sweep Kentucky from the Union. That done,--so early in the war,--dissolution might have followed. To the Ohio canal-boy was committed the task of extinguishing this conflagration. It was a difficult task, one which, with the means at command, would have appalled any man not made equal to it by early struggles with hardship and poverty, and entire trust in the Providence that guards his country.