“I’m General Grant. Give my love to your folks when you get home. I’ve known what it was to be a poor white man down South myself once for awhile.” “God bless you, General. I thanks you from the bottom of my heart,” I says as quick as I could find my tongue, “if it had to be surrender I’m glad it was to such a man as you.” “He never said another word, but just walked slow along smoking a big cigar. So ole woman, you know the reason I named that hoss, ‘General Grant.’ It may be I have seen finer hosses than that one, but I couldn’t recollect anything about ’em on the road home.” Dinner over, Tom’s comrades rose and looked wistfully down the dusty road leading southward. “Well, Tom, ole man, we gotter be er movin’,” said the older of the two soldiers. “We’re powerful obleeged to you fur helpin’ us along this fur.” “All right, boys, you’ll find yer train standin’ on the side o’ the track eatin’ grass. Jes climb up, pull the lever and let her go.” The men’s faces brightened, their lips twitched. They looked at Tom, and then at the old horse. They looked down the long dusty road stretching over hill and valley, hundreds of miles south, and then at Tom’s wife and child, whispered to one another a moment, and the elder said: “No, pardner, you’ve been awful good to us, but we’ll get along somehow--we can’t take yer hoss. It’s all yer got now ter make a livin’ on yer place.” “All I got?” shouted Tom, “man alive, ain’t you seed my ole woman, as fat and jolly and han’some as when I married her ’leven years ago? Didn’t you hear her cryin’ an’ shoutin’ like she’s crazy when I got home? Didn’t you see my little gal with eyes jes like her daddy’s? Don’t you see my cabin standin’ as purty as a ripe peach in the middle of the orchard when hundreds of fine houses are lyin’ in ashes? Ain’t I got ten acres of land? Ain’t I got God Almighty above me and all around me, the same God that watched over me on the battlefields? All I got? That old stack o’ bones that looks like er hoss? Well I reckon not!” “Pardner, it ain’t right,” grumbled the soldier, with more of cheerful thanks than protest in his voice. “Oh! Get off you fools,” said Tom good-naturedly, “ain’t it my hoss? Can’t I do what I please with him?” So with hearty hand-shakes they parted, the two astride the old horse’s back. One had lost his right leg, the other his left, and this gave them a good leg on each side to hold the cargo straight. “Take keer yerself, Tom!” they both cried in the same breath as they moved away. “Take keer yerselves, boys. I’m all right!” answered Tom, as he stumped his way back to the home. “It’s all right, it’s all right,” he muttered to himself. “He’d a come in handy, but I’d a never slept thinkin’ o’ them peggin’ along them rough roads.”