“Yes, young mahster. Dis is de way ’tis. You ’pear like a stranger in dese parts, beggin’ your pardon, an’ maybe you mout’n’ understan’ how de folks ’bout here is. S’posin’ some o’ de neighbors had ’a’ step in, and dar warn’t nothin’ for ’em to eat, an’ mahster hear ’bout it when he come back, how I turn a gent’mun hongry ’way fum de do’. How ’bout dat, you reckon? Umgh-umgh! You don’t know my mahster! Didn’t I try it once! Lord ’a’ mussy!” “How was it?” “You ax me how was it! Go ’long, chile!” (No musket had gone off yet, and Joe began to feel rather more comfortable.) “Go ’long! My mahster was off fox-huntin’ wid some o’ de bloods,—some o’ de bloods,—an’ when he come back an’ find out I hadn’t cook no supper jess ’cause he was away, an’ I done turn a gent’mun off widout he supper, mahster he gimme, eff you b’lieve Joe, he gimme ’bout de keenest breshin’ Joe ever tase in he born days.” And, throwing back his head, he gave a laugh such as these soldiers had never heard in their lives. And none of us shall ever hear again. As for old Jim, who had never laid the weight of his finger on the romancer whose imagination was now playing like a fountain, tears of affectionate gratitude came into his eyes. An instant later, and all kindly feeling was curdled in his simple heart. Hearing a bustle, he peeped through the briers, and saw the officer in command of the party coming towards the kitchen, bearing in his hand the Virginia flag. He had discovered it in old Jim’s bedroom, where he had tacked it upon the bare wall, so that it was the last thing he saw at night and the first his opening eyes beheld. It was an insult to the Union soldiers, he heard the officer say, to flaunt the old rag in their faces. It was what no patriot could stand. He would teach the dashed rebels a lesson. “Set fire to this house,” he ordered. “The old rattletrap would fall down anyway, the first high wind that came along,” he added, with a laugh. That laugh had a keener sting for old Jim than the order to burn down the house which had sheltered him for sixty years. The bitterest thing about poverty, says Juvenal, is that it makes men ridiculous. Late in the night, when the smoking ruins of his house no longer gave any light, Jim crawled stealthily down the ravine. Could the sentry, as he marched back and forth on his beat, have seen the look that the old man, turning, fixed upon him every now and then as he made his way through the jungle, he would have felt less comfortable. As for Jim, half dead with cold, he reached the fires of the Confederate pickets at daybreak. On his way he had stopped at a certain old oak, and, thrusting down his arm into its hollow trunk, drew forth his rifle.