“He was a tall, gaunt, sallow man of about thirty, with small gray eyes, a fine falsetto voice, pitched in the minor key, and his speech was the rude dialect of the mountains. His face had as many expressions as could be found in a regiment, and he seemed a strange combination of cunning, simplicity, undaunted courage, and undoubting faith; yet, though he might pass for a simpleton, he had a rude sort of wisdom, which, cultivated, might have given his name to history. “The young Colonel sounded him thoroughly, for the fate of the little army might depend on his fidelity. The man’s soul was as clear as crystal, and in ten minutes Garfield saw through it. His history is stereotyped in that region. Born among the hills, where the crops are stones, and sheep’s noses are sharpened before they can nibble the thin grass between them, his life had been one of the hardest toil and privation. He knew nothing but what Nature, the Bible, the Course of Time, and two or three of Shakespeare’s plays had taught him; but, somehow, in the mountain air he had grown up to be a man—a man, as civilized nations account manhood. “‘Why did you come into the war?’ at last asked the Colonel. “‘To do my sheer fur the kentry, Gin’ral,’ answered the man. ‘And I didn’t druv no barg’in wi’ th’ Lord. I guv him my life squar’ out; and ef he’s a mind ter tack it on this tramp, why, it’s a his’n; I’ve nothin’ ter say agin it.’ “‘You mean that you’ve come into the war not expecting to get out of it?’ “‘That’s so, Gin’ral.’ “‘Will you die rather than let the dispatch be taken?’ “‘I will.’ “The Colonel recalled what had passed in his own mind when poring over his mother’s Bible that night at his home in Ohio, and it decided him. ‘Very well,’ he said; ‘I will trust you.’”