He started—he jumped from his seat. “Not Ajax—any critter we got but Ajax.” “Oh, Solomon, they cannot run—it’s—it’s—Ajax or death for him.” She was weeping, her head on his great shoulder, clinging to his arm, the perfume of her hair going into the soul of him like the odor of wild grape blossoms after the spring rains in Dingley Dell. “Will you—will you, Solomon; oh, save him for me!” “So he’p me God, I will—he bein’ yo’ brother—my brother.” “You are my brother, Solomon—the Brother of Nobility.” Silence. He sat holding her hand as he would Dinah Mariah’s. “Will you—er—kiss yo’ brother—when he gits here?” She blushed. “Don’t we always kiss our brothers, Solomon?” He scratched his head thoughtfully. “Awhile ago you made a remark cal’k’lated ter sorter sot me to ’sposin’ thet mebbe I mou’t also be yo’ brother—” There was a ripple from Telulah Falls, the pressure of lips on his cheek, a whiff of wild grape blossoms in the Dell, a rustle of skirts up the path, and Solomon sat breathing hard in silence. “Wal, ef lightnin’ ’ud only give us notice when an’ whur it’s goin’ ter strike!” In camp he heard news—strange news. The whole army would strike next day, for they had Johnston with his flank wide open; would bag him if that scout didn’t get back through the lines—Captain Coleman, the daring rebel scout. They had him surrounded now in a thicket by the creek, the man they would give a brigade for—he was theirs if the pickets were careful. Then it all came over Solomon and with it a blow that brought the great strange man to dumbness. “I swore not to betray her—not to be her Judas—oh, God, enny body but thet white-livered, snivelin’—” He heard the flag rustling in the night air. He walked over, crept under the folds, pressing it to his hot cheeks, kissing and fondling it. “Judas! Judas!—oh, my country’s colors.” He looked across the night to the hills where a thousand camp-fires twinkled in unbroken lines of starry sentinels. “Ye’ve got so menny to defen’ ye,” he said to the flag, “so menny twixt you an’ death. An’ she—jes’ me—jes’ me!” He sang low the song that had taken the camp. “I’ve seed him in the camp fires of a hunder’d circlin’ camps, They have builded him an altar in the evenin’ dews an’ damps—” He stopped and looks at the living scene before him—it was all so true. Then lower still: “He has sounded forth the trumpet thet shall nurver know retreat, He is siftin’ out the souls o’ men—” He sprang up with a pain in his heart. “Siftin’ out the Judases, an’, oh God, I’m a Judas arry way you fix it! Why did you fling me in this heah pit among the wolves o’ war—away from my mount’in home—from little Dinah Mariah?”