He half turned his chubby body so as to face me. By now I was sitting on the log between them. I had scented a story and I craved mightily to hear it, though I never dreamed that some day I should be writing it out. “You see, boy, it was like this: Upstate the sentiment was purty evenly divided betwixt stayin' in the Union and goin' out of it; but down here, in Red Gravel County, practically everybody was set one way--so much one way that they took to callin' our town Little Charleston, and spoke of this here Congressional District as the South Carolina of the West. Ez state after state went out, the feelin' got warmer and warmer; but the leaders of public opinion, all except Heck Dallas, counselled holdin' off till the legislature could act. Heck, he was for crossin' over into Illinois some nice pleasant dark night and killin' off the Abolitionists, though at that time of speakin' there weren't many more Abolitionists livin' on that side of the river than there were on this. That was merely Heck's way of expressin' his convictions. “In spite of his desires, we kept on waitin'. But when word come from Frankfort that the legislature, by a mighty clost vote, had voted down the Secession Ordinance and had declared fur armed neutrality--which was in the nature of a joke, seein' ez everybody in the state who was old enough to tote a fusee was already armed and couldn't be a neutral--why, down in this neck of the woods we didn't wait no longer. “Out of the front window of his printin' office old Colonel Noble h'isted the first Confederate flag seen in these parts; and that night, at the old market house, there was the biggest mass meetin' that ever had been held in this here town up to then. A few young fellers had already slid down acrost the border into Tennessee to enlist, and a few more were already oyer in Virginia, wearin' the grey; but everybody else that was anybody was there. “Right away Heck took the platform. They'd a had to lock it up somewheres to keep him frum takin' it. He was up on one of them market benches, wavin' his arms and spoutin' about the mudsills and the nigger lovers, and jest darin' the accursed invader to put one heel upon the sacred soil of the grand old Commonwealth--not both his heels, but ary one of 'em--when all of a sudden Meriwether Grider leaned over and kissed his wife--he hadn't been married but a little more'n a year and they had a baby about three weeks old at home. And then he stepped forward and climbed up on the bench and sort of shoved Heck to one side, and called out that there'd been enough talk, and that it was about time for action; and said, ef somebody had a piece of paper handy, he'd like mightily to put his name down as a volunteer fur the Southern Army. And in another second every woman there was cheerin' with one side of her mouth and cryin' with the other.