A Little Union Scout

by Joel Chandler Harris

"Not the slightest in the world," the man answered.

"Thin ye'd have a quarrel wit' his wife an' she'd have all the advantages," said the Irishman with a laugh. "F'r no longer than the last time I was at Chattanooga, Missus Paul says, 'It's a good thing, Mr. O'Halloran,' she says, 'that ye're a hair's breadth taller than me beloved husband,' she says, 'or I'd niver tell ye apart. Only the sharp eyes av a wife or a mither,' she says, 'could pick out me husband if he stood be your side,' she says."

"I must say," remarked the pious-looking man, "that you gentlemen were never more mistaken in your lives when you hint that there is no such person as Frank Leroy. I knew him when he was a boy—a beardless boy, as you may say. In fact, his father was my next-door neighbor in Knoxville, and I used to see Frank reading old Brownlow's paper."

"Don't think ut!" replied the Irishman, and with that all joined in the conversation and I heard more of the perilous adventures and hair-breadth escapes of Captain Frank Leroy than you could put in a book. It seemed that his identity was a mystery, but he was none the less a hero in men's minds because his very existence had been called in question; for people will hug delusions to their bosoms in the face of religion itself, as we all know.

The door of an inner room was open, and I could hear a conversation going on. One of the participants was the stuttering man, whose voice I had heard before the stable-door, and at a moment when I thought that my movements would attract no attention I took advantage of the freedom of a public-house and sauntered aimlessly into the room as if I had no particular business there. I saw with surprise that the chap who had proposed to steal the horses was one of the merchants of the town at whose store I had occasionally traded. In the far end of the room, reading a newspaper by the light of a small fire, sat a slip of a youth. He wore a military cloak that covered his figure from his neck to his top-boots.

I saw that he was not so absorbed in the paper that he failed to make a note of my presence in the room, and he shifted himself around in his chair so that he could get a better view of me, and still leave his face in the shadow. Near him sat a motherly-looking woman of fifty. She was well preserved for her age, and wore a smile on her face that was good to look at. The youngster said something to her in a low tone, and she immediately turned her attention to me. Some other words passed between the two, and then the woman beckoned to me. I obeyed the summons with alacrity, for I liked her face.

"You seem to be lonely," she said. "Have a seat by our little fire. This is not a guest-room, but we have been so overrun lately that we have had to turn it over to the public." She paused a moment and then went on. "You are over-young to be in the army," she suggested.

She had turned so that she looked me full in the face, and there was a kindly, nay, a generous light in her eyes, and I could no more have lied to her in the matter than I could have lied to my own mother if she had been alive. "I do not have a very hard time in the army," I replied.

"No, I suppose not," she remarked. "You are one to make friends wherever you go. Few are so fortunate; I have known only one or two."

There was a note of sadness in her tones that touched me profoundly. The cause I can't explain, and the effect was beyond description. I hesitated before making any reply, and when I did I tried to turn it off lightly. "I never saw but one," I answered, "on whom I desired to make an impression."