And then he was silent, and I did not care to look in his eyes. I noticed that the black cravat he had on was very old, and worn through in places. Also that he was actually out at the elbows, as to the right arm at least, for there, in the sleeve, was a ragged hole that showed the soiled lining of his coat. Presently the boy said: “When you go down, tell them you saw me, won’t you?” Of course it was presumptuous in him, but I thought of those five or six years. In that time he would learn--that and other things. Just then Judge Goodman stuck his head out of his private room. * * * * * I happened to go to the capital in May of that year. We were then at war, you will remember. I told the man who kept the cigar stand in the lobby of the St. James that I had seen the boy in the city, that he was practising law there, and wished to be remembered to his friends. I think I told him, also, that the boy was doing well, and already making a favorable impression upon many of the older and more prominent members of the bar. But the man shook his head and responded: “Why, haven’t you heard? He’s gone to war--enlisted in the First Infantry!” I hid my surprise from the man, and told him I had heard that, of course, but that the bar regarded his absence as merely temporary. That summer I got into the habit of scanning the lists of sick and disabled soldiers who were at Chickamauga and the other fever camps, or in Cuba. I was especially likely to do this where the First Regiment was concerned. It was a practice foolish in a way, because it took up time in the morning, and was only a meaningless list of names, anyway. But then, we were rather proud of the First in the city that summer, for it was our crack regiment, you know, and my wife had one or two acquaintances among the young officers, who reflected a certain glory upon her, and gave a color to her conversation. A friend of mine at the capital, a lawyer, often sent me, two or three times a week, perhaps, copies of the local papers, and these frequently published little bits of personal gossip about boys from that town who had gone to “the front,” as they put it. The country papers gave a more personal tone to their war articles than did the city papers. These latter seemed to think that a war is got up especially for the officers. Doubtless they were about right. After a while, the First went to Cuba. The regiment got there too late for active fighting in the operations about Santiago, but not too late for duty in the trenches, with their freshly upturned earth, damp and saturated with malaria. Nor did they get there too late for the fever. Many of them contracted it, and some died of it. I used to read the lists of the sick and dead, to see if the names of any of my wife’s acquaintances in the field, line or staff, were among them.