A day or two after was the time when the artillery volunteers were to meet at the courthouse and elect their officers. Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine sent Richard off with their blessing. He reached the courthouse, which was ten miles away, by ten o’clock in the morning. It was a day of brightness, and the old colonial courthouse and clerk’s office lay basking in the warm April sun. A great crowd had assembled, chiefly men from eighteen to forty-five, but there were boys and graybeards present, and a few ladies. The election of officers was held _viva voce_, and Richard was elected, almost without a dissentient vote, captain of the battery of artillery. The enrollment was large because Richard Tremaine carried men’s bodies as well as minds with him. When the business part of the programme was over, there was a call for a speech, that invariable concomitant of every species of business transacted in Virginia. This was responded to by Colonel Carey, who had an inveterate passion for speechmaking, inherited from a long line of speechmaking ancestors. The colonel mounted the stone steps of the old courthouse and began with his usual preliminary, which was the declaration that he was totally unprepared for this honor and averse to public speaking, and then promptly drew from his pocket a manuscript of the speech it took him precisely three-quarters of an hour to deliver and which had been prepared for the occasion as soon as secession had become a living issue. The exordium of the colonel’s speech was that which is invariably required of every orator on Virginia soil--a tribute to the women of Virginia. Richard Tremaine, standing on the edge of the crowd of all sorts and conditions of men, listened gravely to the colonel’s roaring platitudes, his torrent of adjectives, his prophetic visions. The colonel was a fighting man, but Richard had no doubt would indulge his speechmaking, if allowed, when bullets were whizzing and shell tearing up the ground around him. Colonel Tremaine had frequently complained that during the Mexican War, Randolph Carey was always making speeches when the Mexicans were doing their best work, while Colonel Carey often told of his annoyance when, in a ticklish position, Colonel Tremaine would insist upon discussing tailors and quoting long excerpts from the “Lake Poets.” Richard, remembering this, smiled. Never were there two more determined old fire-eaters than this couple of Virginia colonels.