"_I present this young man as a Christmas gift to my old friend, his grandsire, Colonel Jeremiah Travis. The man who could fight his guns as he did at Shiloh, and could offer to die for a friend, is good enough to receive pardon, for anything he may have done or may do, from_ "A. LINCOLN." Afterwards came Franklin and the news that Captain Tom had been killed. CHAPTER III FRANKLIN But General Jeremiah Travis could not keep out of the war; for toward the last, when Hood's army marched into Tennessee the Confederacy called for everything--even old age. And so there rode out of the gates of The Gaffs a white-haired old man, who sat his superb horse well. He was followed by a negro on a mule. They were General Jeremiah Travis and his body-servant, Bisco. "I have come to fight for my state," said General Travis to the Confederate General. "An' I am gwine to take keer of old marster suh," said Bisco as he stuck to his saddle girth. It was the middle of the afternoon of the last day of November--and also the last day of many a gallant life--when Hood's tired army marched over the brow of the high ridge of hills that looked down on the town of Franklin, in front of which, from railroad to river, behind a long semicircular breastwork lay Schofield's determined army. It was a beautiful view, and as plain as looking down from the gallery into the pit of an amphitheatre. Just below them lay the little town in a valley, admirably situated for defense, surrounded as it was on three sides by the bend of a small river, the further banks of which were of solid rocks rising above the town. On the highest of these bluffs--Roper's Knob--across and behind the town, directly overlooking it and grimly facing Hood's army two miles away, was a federal fort capped with mighty guns, ready to hurl their shells over the town at the gray lines beyond. From the high ridge where Hood's army stood the ground gradually rolled to the river. A railroad ran through a valley in the ridge to the right of the Confederates, spun along on the banks of the river past the town and crossed it in the heart of the bend to the left of the federal fort. From that railroad on the Confederate right, in front and clear around the town, past an old gin house which stood out clear and distinct in the November sunlight--on past the Carter House, to the extreme left bend of the river on the left--in short, from river to river again and entirely inclosing the town and facing the enemy--ran the newly made and hastily thrown-up breastworks of the federal army, the men rested and ready for battle.