“I recollect one in particular,” he said grimly: “the Christmas of ’64 in the trenches at Petersburg, when it was snowing and freezing and hailing, and we had nothing to eat, and death and defeat stalked with us. Don’t you remember that Christmas, boy?” asked the Colonel of Uncle Cesar.
“God knows I does,” responded Uncle Cesar fervently.
“That boy,” continued the Colonel, indicating the gray-haired Cesar, “was my body-servant during the whole war. He is an arrant coward, and would run away if he thought there was a Yankee within five miles.”
Uncle Cesar bore this imputation upon his personal courage with a broad grin.
“I warn’t no soldier-man, ole Marse,” he explained. “I was jes’ your body-servant, and I was skeered of Yankees, and I’se skeered of ’em now.”
At this, Fortescue laughed.
“You needn’t be afraid of me, Uncle Cesar,” he said.
But Uncle Cesar shook his head.
“Yankees is mighty cur’rus. In the wartime, they jes’ as soon kill a man as wring a chicken’s neck.”
“But I must say,” added the Colonel, “that although Cesar always disappeared promptly as soon as we got into a dangerous place, he invariably turned up when the trouble was over, and with something hot for me to eat or something to drink—which he called coffee, and was almost as good.”