WHEN Gaston reached Hambright the following day, and whispered to his mother the good news, he hastened to tell his friend Tom Camp. The young man’s heart warmed toward the white-haired old soldier in this hour of his victory. With sparkling eyes, he told Tom of his stormy scene with the General, of its curious ending, and the hours he spent in heaven beneath the limbs of an old magnolia. [Illustration: 0396] Tom listened with rapture. “Ah, didn’t I tell you, if you hung on you’d get her by-and-by? So you bearded the General in his den did you? I ’ll bet his eyes blazed when he seed you! He’s got an awful temper when you rile him. You ought to a seed him one day when our brigade was ordered into a charge where three concealed batteries was cross firin’ and men was failin’ like wheat under the knife. Geeminy but didn’t he cuss! He wouldn’t take the order fust from the orderly, and sent to know if the Major-General meant it. I tell you us fellers that was layin’ there in the grass listenin’ to them bullets singin’ thought he was the finest cusser that ever ripped an oath. “He reared and he charged, and he cussed, and He damned that man for tryin’ to butcher his men, and he never moved till the third order came. That was the night ten thousand wounded men lay on the field, and me in the middle of ’em with a Minie ball in my shoulder. The Yankees and our men was all mixed up together, and just after dark the full moon came up through the trees and you could see as plain as day. I begun to sing the old hymn, ‘There is a land of pure delight,’ and you ought to have heard them ten thousand wounded men sing! “While we was singing the General came through lookin’ up his men. He seed me and said, ‘Is that you, Tom Camp?’ “I looked up at him, and he was crying like a child, and he went on from man to man cryin’ and cussin the fool that sent us into that hell-hole. The General’s a rough man, if you rub his fur the wrong way, but his heart’s all right. He’s all gold I tell you!” “Well, I’m in for a tussle with him, Tom.” “Shucks, man, you can beat him with one hand tied behind you if you’ve got his gal’s heart. She’s got his fire, and a gal as purty as she is can just about do what she pleases in this world.” “I hope she can bring him around. I like the General. I’d much rather not fight him.” “Where’s Flora?” cried Tom looking around in alarm. “I saw her going toward the spring in the edge of the woods there a minute ago,” replied Gaston. Tom sprang up and began to hop and jump down the path toward the spring with incredible rapidity. Flora was playing in the branch below the spring and Tom saw the form of a negro man passing over the opposite hill going along the spring path that led in that direction. “Was you talkin’ with that nigger, Flora?” asked Tom holding his hand on his side and trying to recover his breath.