"As I knew nothing about Franklin's appearance, I said I supposed that would do. Before respectable people I'd have hated to see any of our Generals wronged by the Captain's looks, but as it was only a Rebel, it didn't make any difference. And then the object overcame all scruples.
"'Well,' continued the Captain, 'you are to be one of my aids. When we get near the house, just fall back a pace or two.'
"And off he rode, the big mare trotting like an elephant, and keeping my nag up to a gallop. Keeping back a pace or two was a matter of necessity. The Captain was full a hundred yards ahead when he halted near the house to give me time to get in position, his black mare prancing and snorting under the Mexican ticklers in a manner that would have done credit to Bucephalus. He pranced on up towards the house, which was a long weather-boarded structure, a story and a half high, with a porch running its entire length. The building was put up, I should judge, before the war of 1812, and not repaired since. A crabbed old man in a grey coat, with horn buttons, and tan-colored pantaloons, looking as if he didn't know what to make exactly of the character of his visitors, was on the porch. Near him, and somewhat in his rear, was a darkie about as old as himself.
"'Won't you get off your critters?' at length said the old man, his servant advancing to hold the horses.
"The Captain dismounted, and as his long spurs
jingled, and the Major's sabre clattered on the rotten porch floor, the old fellow changed countenance considerably, impressed with the presence of greatness.
"'I am Major-General Franklin, sir, commander of a Grand Division of the Grand Army of the Potomac,' pompously said the Captain, at the same time introducing me as his Aid, Major Kennedy.
"'Well, gentlemen officers,' stammers the old man, confusedly, and bowing repeatedly, 'I always liked the old Union. I fit for it in the milish in the last war with the Britishers. Walk in, walk in,' continued he, pointing to the door which the darkie had opened.
"We went into a long room with a low ceiling, dirty floor with no carpet on, a few old chairs, with and without backs, and a walnut table that looked as if it once had leaves. In one corner was a clock, that stopped some time before the war commenced, as the old man afterwards told us, and in the opposite corner stood a dirty pine cupboard. While taking seats, I couldn't help thinking how badly the room would compare with a dining room of one of the neat little farm houses that you can see in any of our mountain gaps, where the land produces nothing but grasshoppers and rocks, and the farmers have to get along by raising chickens to keep down the swarms of grasshoppers, and by peddling huckleberries, and they say, but I never saw them at it, by holding the hind legs of the sheep up to let them get their noses between the rocks for pasture."
This latter assertion was indignantly denied by an officer who had his home in one of the gaps.