“Now you're shoutin'!” Judge Priest assented. “Say, Lew, do you call to mind them speeches Hector Dallas used to utter 'way back yonder, when Sumter was bein' fired on and the Yankee Government was callin' fur troops to put down the Rebellion, ez they seen fit to term it? Heck Dallas was our champion homegrown orator in those times,” he vouchsafed in an aside for my better enlightenment. “Somethin' about that young feller yonder, that's speakin' so brilliantly and so fluently now, puts me right smartly in mind of him. Heck was plenty copious with language himself. When it come to burnin' words he was jest the same ez one of these here volcanoes. Remember, don't you, Lew, how willin' Heck was to bleed and die fur his native land?” “But he didn't,” stated Doctor Lake grimly. “Well--since you mention it--not to any noticeable extent,” said Judge Priest. “Leastwise, any bleedin' that he done was done internally, frum the strain of utterin' all them fiery remarks.” Again he included me with a gesture. “You see, son, Heck didn't go off to the war with the rest of us. Nearly everybody else did--this town was purty near emptied of young fellers of a suitable courtin' age after we'd gone down to Camp Boone to begin drillin'. But Hecky didn't go. “Ez I recollect, he felt called upon to put out first fur Richmond to give President Davis and the Cabinet the benefit of his advice or somethin'; and aimed to join us later. But he didn't--somehow, somethin' always kept inter-ferin' with his ambition to bleed and die, until after a while it seemed like he jest got discouraged and quit tryin'. When we got back home, four years later--sech ez was left of us--Heck had done been entirely reconstructed and was fixin' to run fur office on the Black Radical ticket.” “The cat had to jump mighty brisk to beat Hector,” said Doctor Lake; “or else, when she landed on the other side, she'd find him already there, wanning a place for her. I've known a good many like Hector--and some of them prospered fairly well--while they lasted.” “Well, the spring of Sixty-one was a stirrin' period, and I reckin oratory helped along right smartly at the start,” said Judge Priest; “though, to be sure, later on it came to pass that the boys who could go hongry and ragged, and still keep on fightin' the Yankees, were the ones that really counted. “Take Meriwether Grider now: He went in as our company commander and he come out with the marks of a brigadier on his coat collar; but I'll bet you a ginger cookie Meriwether Grider never said a hundred words on a stretch in his life without he was cussin' out some feller fur not doin' his duty. Meriwether certainly learned to cuss mighty well fur a man whose early trainin' had been so turribly neglected in that respect.” “Recall how Meriwether Grider behaved the night we organised Company B?” inquired Doctor Lake. “Jest the same ez ef it was yistiddy!” assented Judge Priest.