"An' may I axe you," said Mayhall, ruffling a little, "may I axe you—why you—"
"Certainly," said Bill, and he handed over the paper that he held in his hand.
Mayhall took the paper and looked it up and down helplessly—Flitter Bill slyly watching him.
Mayhall handed it back. "If you please, Misto Richmond—I left my specs at home." Without a smile, Bill began. It was an order from the commandant at Cumberland Gap, sixty miles farther down Powell's Valley, authorizing Mayhall Wells to form a company to guard the Gap and to protect the property of Confederate citizens in the valley; and a commission of captaincy in the said company for the said Mayhall Wells. Mayhall's mouth widened to the full stretch of his lean jaws, and, when Bill was through reading, he silently reached for the paper and looked it up and down and over and over, muttering:
"Well—well—well!" And then he pointed silently to the name that was at the bottom of the paper.
Bill spelled out the name:
"Jefferson Davis" and Mayhall's big fingers trembled as he pulled them away, as though to avoid further desecration of that sacred name.
Then he rose, and a magical transformation began that can be likened—I speak with reverence—to the turning of water into wine. Captain Mayhall Wells raised his head, set his chin well in, and kept it there. He straightened his shoulders, and kept them straight. He paced the floor with a tread that was martial, and once he stopped before the door with his right hand thrust under his breast-pocket, and with wrinkling brow studied the hills. It was a new man—with the water in his blood changed to wine—who turned suddenly on Flitter Bill Richmond:
"I can collect a vehy large force in a vehy few days." Flitter Bill knew that—that he could get together every loafer between the county-seat of Wise and the county-seat of Lee—but he only said encouragingly:
"Good!"