“I never heard no more o’ Widdy Parker tell last night, an’ then it come most sudden. Our retchment hed a reunion on the fiel’ this year, you know, an’ on Monday I went back to Gettysburg fer the first time sence I was honorable discharged. The boys was all there, what’s left o’ ’em, an’ we jest hed a splendid time wisitin’ the monyments an’ talkin’ over the days back in ’63. There was my old tent-mate, Sam Thomas, on one leg, an’ Jim Luckenbach, who was near tuk be yaller janders afore Petersburg. There was the colonel, growed old an’ near blind, an’ our captain an’ a hundred odd others. “Well, last night we was a lot of us a-settin’ in the hotel tellin’ stories. It come my turn an’ I told about the dead soldier’s letter. A big felly in a unyform hed ben leanin’ agin the bar watchin’ us. ’Hen I begin he pricked up his ears a leetle. Ez I got furder an’ furder he seemed to git more an’ more interested, I noticed. By an’ by I seen he was becomin’ red an’ oneasy, an’ final ’hen I’d finished he walks acrosst the room to where we was settin’ an’ stands there starin’ at me, never sayin’ nawthin’. “A minute passed. I sais, sais I, ‘Well, comrade, what air you starin’ so fer?’ “Sais he, ‘That letter was fer Mary Parker?’ “‘True,’ sais I, surprised. “‘Dead sure?’ sais he. “‘Sure,’ sais I. “Then he shakes his fist an’ yells, ‘I’ve ’tended most every reunion here sence the war hopin’ to meet the idjet that sent that letter to my wife an’ wrote that foolishness ’bout findin’ my dead body. After twenty-five years I’ve foun’ you!’ “He pulls off his coat. The boys all jumps up. “I, half skeert to death, cries, ‘But you ain’t the dead man!’ “‘Dead,’ he yells. ‘Never ben near it. Nor did I ’tend to hev every blame fool in the army mailin’ my letters nuther. Because you finds a man with my coat on, that hain’t no reason he’s me. I was gittin’ to the rear with orders ez lively ez a cricket an’ th’owed off that coat jest because it was warm runnin’.’ “‘Hen I seen what I’d done I grabs his arm, I was so excited, an’ cries, ‘Did she merry Silas Quincy?’ “‘It wasn’t your fault she didn’t,’ he sais, deliberate like, rollin’ up his sleeves. ‘I got home two days after the letter an’ stopped the weddin’ party on their way to church.’” CHAPTER II. _The Spelling Bee._ The Chronic Loafer stretched his legs along the counter and rested his back comfortably against a pile of calicoes. “I allus held,” he said, “that they hain’t no sech things ez a roarinborinallus. I know some sais they is ’lectric lights, but ’hen I seen that big un last night I sayd to my Missus, an’ I hol’ I’m right, I sayd that it was nawthin’ but the iron furnaces over the mo’ntain. Fer s’pose, ez the Teacher claims, they was lights at the North Pole--does you uns believe we could see ’em all that distance? Well now!” He gazed impressively about the store. The Patriarch, the Miller and the G.A.R. Man were disposed to agree with him. The School Teacher was sarcastic.