"'It's about the tenth day sicice the Donna Anna gladdens us first. Orders comes up from Vera Cruz for the Pine Knot Cavaliers to come down to the coast an' embark for New Orleans. The word is passed, an' our little jimcrow camp buzzes like bees, with us gettin' ready to hit the trail. Spencer asks "leave;" an' then saddles up an' starts at once. He says he's got a trick or two to turn in Vera Cruz before we sails. That's the last we-all ever beholds of Lootenant Jack Spencer. "'When Spencer don't show up none in Vera Cruz, an' the ship throws loose without him, he's marked, "missin'," on the company's books. If he's a private, now, it would have been "deserted;" but bein' Spencer's an officer, they makes it "missin'." An' they gets it right, at that; Spencer is shorely missin'. Spencer not only don't come back to Tennessee none; he don't even send no word nor make so much as a signal smoke to let on whar he's at. This yere, to some, is more or less disapp'intin'. "'Thar's a lady back in Tennessee which Spencer's made overtures to. before he goes to war that time, to wed. Young she is; beautiful, high-grade, corn- fed, an' all that; an' comes of one of the most clean-bred fam'lies of the whole Cumberland country. I will interject right yere to say that thar's ladies of two sorts. If a loved one, tender an' troo, turns up missin' at roll-call, an' the phenomenon ain't accompanied with explanations, one sort thinks he's quit, an' the other thinks he's killed. Spencer's inamorata is of the former. She's got what the neighbors calls "hoss sense." She listens to what little thar is to tell of Spencer fadin' from our midst that Plaza Perdita day, shrugs her shoulders, an' turns her back on Spencer's mem'ry. An' the next news you gets is of how, inside of three months, she jumps some gent--who's off his gyard an' is lulled into feelin's of false secoority--ropes, throws, ties an' weds him a heap, an' he wakes up to find he's a gone fawn-skin, an' to realize his peril after he's onder its hoofs. That's what this Cumberland lady does. I makes no comments; I simply relates it an' opens a door an' lets her out. "'I'm back in Tennessee mighty nigh a year before ever I hears ag'in of Lootenant Jack Spencer of the Pine Knot Cavaliers. It's this a- way: I'm stoppin' with my old gent near Warwhoop Crossin', the same bein' a sister village to Pine Knot, when he's recalled to my boyish mind. It looks like Spencer ain't got no kin nearer than a aunt, an' mebby a stragglin' herd of cousins. He never does have no brothers nor sisters; an' as for fathers an' mothers an' sech, they all cashes in before ever Spencer stampedes off for skelps in that Mexican War at all. "'These yere kin of Spencer's stands his absence ca'mly, an' no one hears of their settin' up nights, or losin' sleep, wonderin' where he's at. Which I don't reckon now they'd felt the least cur'ous concernin' him--for they're as cold-blooded as