Mr. Boone untwined his boots and for the first time during a half-hour stood in them. As he shook Driscoll's hand, he shook his own head, and at last observed, in the way of continuing a conversation, "It was the almightiest soaking rain, Din, for the land's sake!" And he shook his head again, quite mournfully. Driscoll had not seen Mr. Boone since leaving Shelby's camp back in Arkansas. He naturally wished to know what was being talked about. But his woeful friend only kept on, "It wet all Texas, heavier'n a sponge, and," he added, "they ain't coming." "Shanks! You don't mean----" "Don't I? But I do. They're a surrendered army. The whole Trans-Mississippi Department of 'em, pretty near. But not quite, bear that in----" "But the rain? What in----" "What did you come down here for, I'd like to know? To say how the Trans-Mississippi wouldn't surrender, didn't you? Well?" "Oh, go on!" "Well, it rained, I tell you. Didn't it rain before Waterloo? Didn't it now?" Mr. Boone believed in trouble as an antidote for trouble. When he had stirred Driscoll out of his dejection enough to make him want to fight, he deigned to clear the atmosphere of that befogging downpour in Texas. "You rec'lect, Din, that there war god we put up in Kirby Smith's place, who so dashingly would lead us on to Mexico?" "Buckner, yes." "Him, Simon Bolivar B., whose gold lace glittered as though washed by the dew and wiped with the sunshine----" "Now, Shanks, drop it!" Driscoll was referring to the editorial pen which Mr. Boone would clutch and get firmly in hand with the least rise of emotion. Against his other conversation, the clutching always became at once apparent. "Anyhow," said Daniel meekly, "he wilted, did our Simon of B. B. calibre, and he gave back the command to Smith. And Smith's first order, his very first order, sir, was that the Department, the whole fifty thousand, should march into Shrevepoht and--and _surrender_, by thunder!" "Dan, you're not going to tell me----"