Major Edward Conway scarcely grunted--it might have been anything from an oath to an eructation. Then, taking his pipe-stem from between his teeth, and shifting his tobacco in his mouth,--for he was both chewing and smoking--he expectorated squarely into the eyes of a hound which had followed Jud up the steps, barking and snarling at his heels. He was a good marksman even with spittle, and the dog fled, whining. Then he answered, with an oath, that he was about as well as the rheumatism and the beastly weather would permit. Jud came up uninvited and sat down. The Major did not even turn his head. The last of a long line of gentlemen did not waste his manners on one beneath him socially. Jud was discreetly silent, and soon the Major began to tell all of his troubles, but in the tone of one who was talking to his servant and with many oaths and much bitterness: "You see it's this damned rheumatism, Carpenter. Las' night, suh, I had to drink a quart of whiskey befo' I cu'd go to sleep at all. It came on me soon aftah I come out of the wah, an' it growed on me like jim'son weeds in a hog-pen. My appetite's quit on me--two pints of whiskey an' wild-cherry bark a day, suh, don't seem to help it at all, suh. I cyant tell whut the devil's the matter with my stomach. Nothin' I eat or drink seems to agree with me but whiskey. If I drink this malarial water, suh, m'legs an' m'feet begin to swell. I have to go back to whiskey. Damn me, but I was born for Kentucky. Why, I've got a forty dollar thirst on me this very minute. I'm so dry I cu'd kick up a dust in a hog wallow. Maybe, though, it's this rotten stuff that cross-roads Jew is sellin' me an' callin' it whiskey. He's got a mortgage on everything here but the houn's and the house cat, an' he's tryin' to see if he cyant kill me with his bug-juice an' save a suit in Chancery. I'm goin' to sen' off an' see if I cyant git another bran' of it, suh." Edward Conway was the type of the Southerner wrecked financially and morally by the war. His father and grandfather had owned Millwood, and the present owner had gone into the war a carefully educated, well reared youth of twenty. He came out of it alive, it is true, but, like many another fine youth of both North and South, addicted to drink. The brutality of war lies not alone in death--it is often more fatal, more degenerating, in the life it leaves behind. Coming out of the war, Conway found, as did all others in the Tennessee Valley who sided with the South, that his home was a wreck. Not a fence, even, remained--nothing but the old home--shutterless, plasterless, its roof rotten, its cellar the abode of hogs. Thousands of others found themselves likewise--brave hearts--men they proved themselves to be--in that they built up their homes out of wreck and their country out of chaos.