Was it a dream or not? But what is the difference, since they are the same. What is the difference?
If a child comes into your home, smiling, from out the sunshine, is it any more your child than the one which enters from out the still, dead night, motherless and homeless, a fantastic waif, but your very own?
I had walked through the old-fashioned garden, rose bordered and lined with hollyhocks and rare old pinks that Aunt Rachel loved. And I had stood bareheaded before the tomb of the old warrior and his bride. I had gone across the meadow to the log cabin they had loved best of all....
Then, very plainly I saw the great fireplace light up with the blaze of hickory logs, and the shadows come and go across the smoked rafters above. And before that fire sat the slim, grim, sword-faced fighter and lover, with a child on one knee and a lamb on the other, even as old Parton had told it.
He turned, smiled, and reaching, took his sword from the wall behind him and, beckoning to me, pointed to the west....
I rushed toward him. The solid door met me, knocking me to my knees on the grass. I arose stunned, but thrilled. My doubts had gone, the spirit of Andrew Jackson pointed me the way. On the grass I knelt for a moment before that hut which is a shrine. A lamb and a child and the sword of the Lord and of Gideon: I thank thee, Lord; for it takes them all to make a man! ... I had not slept but had ridden into town to see the Tennessee troops go by in their last parade.
They came by in battalions, the old battle flag of Jackson at their head, and beside it rode old Hawthorne, sitting his horse as gallantly as when in younger days he rode with Forrest and Morgan.
He saw me, smiled, and saluted.
I watched Braxton Bragg go by at the head of his company, and I saw him look covetously at the beautiful horse I rode.
Following an old custom, a fife and drum corps followed. I heard them coming and my blood leaped fiercely as they marched by, playing "The Girl I Left Behind Me."