The Bishop nodded.
“It was his Company that caught me an' they was glad of any excuse to hang me. An' they mighty nigh done it, but Cap'n Tom came up in time to cut me down an' he said he'd make it hot for any man that teched me, that I was a square prisoner of war, an' he sent me to Johnson Island. Of course it didn't take me long to get out of that hole—I escaped.”
The Bishop was silent, looking at the sword.
“Well, at Franklin, when I seed Cap'n Tom dyin' as I tho'rt, shunned by the Yankees as a traitor——”
“As a traitor?” asked the old man hotly—“what, after Shiloh—after he give up Miss Alice for the flag he loved an' his old grand sire an' The Gaffs an' all of us that loved him—you call that a traitor?”
“You never heard,” said Jack, “how old Gen'l Travis charged the breastworks at Franklin and hit the line where Cap'n Tom's battery stood. Nine times they had charged Cap'n Tom's battery that night—nine times he stood his ground an' they melted away around it. But when he saw the line led by his own grandsire the blood in him was thicker than water and——”
“An' whut?” gasped the Bishop.
“Well, why they say it was a drunken soldier in his own battery who struck him with the heavy hilt of a sword. Any way I found the old Gen'l cryin' over him: 'My Irish Gray—my Irish Gray,' he kept sayin'. 'I might have known it was you,' and the old Gen'l charged on leaving him for dead. An' so I found him an' tuck him in my arms an' carried him to my own cabin up yonder on the mountain—carried him an'——”
“An' whut?”—asked the old man, grasping the outlaw's shoulder—“Didn't he die? We've never been able to hear from him.”
Jack shook his head. “It 'ud been better for him if he had”—and he touched his forehead significantly.