same as a kildee! He hed the furder e-end o’ that bredge a-roarin’ in a second. He fired it in fifty places. He stood so long on that middle pier, I thought he’d be burned alive. All the men was shoutin’ ter him ter come back. He got off ’thout a hair of his head bein’ teched, I hearn. ’Twas a meracle--a plumb meracle. Everybody that seen it said so. Why the nex’ day I swum the ruver ter swap a few lies with them Yankee pickets that we hed struck up an acquaintance with acrost the water, an’ ter beg a chaw o’ terbacco, an’ smoke a pipe or two, sorter sociable like, an’ they was jes’ a-talkin’ ’bout that thar man an’ how he acted. They said they’d like ter git a-holt o’ him fur a minit or two jes’ ter see what he was made out’n. I tole ’em ez how thar sharp-shooters hed better load up with silver ’stead o’ lead nex’ time they got a show at that thar kildee o’ ourn. His life ’peared ter be witched. But law! ’twarn’t more ’n a week arterward when I seen him on the groun’ thar a-nigh Fort Despair, stone dead; he was killed in the big battle, shot through the lungs and the head, and half crushed by the carcass o’ his horse. I couldn’t holp bein’ sorry ez the war hedn’t kerried off somebody ez was less account, an’ lef Major Fortescue. That was his name--John Fortescue.” He turned his slow eyes on his interlocutor, and laughed a little at his own foolish sentimentality about a man he had never known. Brennett precipitately raised the glass to his face; perhaps its expression was not to be trusted even to the slow perceptions of this unspeculative bumpkin. His hand grew rigid with the effort of his will to still its muscles. But his breath was short; his lip was quivering and white. He might not have attained even this degree of self-control had not the vivacious talk and laughter of the young men in the buggy convinced him that Percy had heard nothing. But any day, on their way to or from Chattalla, the ferry-man might rehearse the story. He might even tell it to Miss St. Pierre. He was familiar and garrulous, and his avocation kept him upon the highway; otherwise it would hardly be possible that he could have ready speech of people in their social station. It was only an accident--no design--that Brennett turned the powerful glass upon that great flower-decked redoubt, called Fort Despair in the years gone by. He had no sense of what he saw. All his faculties were bent inward. He was striving to rally his courage, his tact, his invention, but he could only remember helplessly how near success had seemed, how deeply for its sake he had involved himself; he could only repeat again and again that the man lived on the highway--he lived on the highway, and in his very avocation he had a constant reminder of the burning of the bridge, else there would be no need of a ferry-boat. Brennett scarcely heard Toole’s voice still drawling on: