At that moment, when they were hesitating between hunger and fear, Tom butted in upon them and was seized.
"Let the Yankee sample the pies," shouted a second soldier when the little scurry of the capture was over. This met instant approval and Tom, now upon his feet, was being pushed forward to the table when the officer spoke, with a smiling dignity that showed he was the friend as well as the commander of his rude soldiery.
"I'll do the sampling," he said. "Give me a pie."
He bit with strong white teeth through the savory morsel and detected no foreign taint. The pies vanished forthwith, half of one of them down Tom's hungry throat. Then the officer spoke to him.
"Son," he said, "I suppose you borrowed that uniform somewhere, didn't you? You're too young to wear it by right. Who are you?"
He was a man of medium height, spare but splendidly built, with his face bronzed by long campaigning in the open air, regular features, piercing black eyes that twinkled, but could shoot fire, waving black hair above a beautiful brow, dazzling white teeth—altogether a vivid man. His mustache and imperial were black. He was as handsome as Abraham Lincoln was plain, yet there was between the two, the one the son of a Southern aristocrat, the other the son of a Southern poor white, an elusive resemblance. It may have been the innate nobleness and kindliness of both men. It may have been the Kentucky blood which was their common portion. At any rate, the resemblance was there.
From "Famous Adventures of the Civil War." The Century Co.
GENERAL DUKE SAMPLES THE PIES