G. B. Stiles was already there, seated in the same place as on the day before, and Harry took his seat opposite him, and they began a conversation in the same facile way, but the manner of the dry-goods salesman towards him seemed to have undergone a change. It had lost its swagger, and was more that of a man who could be a gentleman if he chose, while to the surprise of Stiles the manner of the young man was as disarmingly quiet and unconcerned as before, 358 and as abstracted. He could not believe that any man hovering on the brink of a terrible catastrophe, and one to avert which required concealment of identity, could be so unwary. He half believed the Swede was laboring under an hallucination, and decided to be deliberate, and await developments for the rest of the day.
After dinner they wandered out to the piazza side by side, and there they sat and smoked, and talked over the political situation as they had the evening before, and Stiles was surprised at the young man’s ignorance of general public matters. Was it ignorance, or indifference?
“I thought all you army men would stand by Grant to the drop of the hat.”
“Yes, I suppose we would.”
“You suppose so! Don’t you know? I carried a gun under Grant, and I’d swear to any policy he’d go in for, and what I say is, they haven’t had quite enough down there. What the South needs is another licking. That’s what it needs.”
“Oh, no, no, no. I was sick of fighting, long before they laid me up, and I guess a lot of us were.”
G. B. Stiles brought his feet to the floor with a stamp of surprise and turned to look full in the young man’s face. For a moment he gazed on him thus, then grunted. “Ever feel one of their bullets?”
“Oh, yes.”
“That the mark, there over your temple?”
“No, it didn’t do any harm to speak of. That’s––where something––struck me.”