“Howkle was with Wolford’s cavalry, an’ I was under ‘Fightin’’ Zollicoffer, as they called him,” the old man began.  “Thar had been a little skirmish,—­one o’ these that never get into the dispatches that don’ do any good, but after which thar’s always good men lef’ lyin’ on the ground.  We had driven ’em back a bit, an’ I was comin’ in when I saw a lad—­he didn’t look more’n about fifteen—­lyin’ in a heap an’ groanin’.  Knowin’ a drink would do him more good than an’thin’ else, I reached for my canteen, an’ stooped down.  Jes’ about then, a horseman dashed out o’ the scrub an’, almos’ befo’ I could think o’ what was comin’, he struck at me with his sabre.”

“When you were giving drink to a wounded soldier!” cried Hamilton indignantly.  “What a cowardly trick!”

“It was ol’ Isaac Howkle,” nodded his uncle, “an’ I s’pose he reckoned this was a chance to get even on the ol’ grudge.  But I rolled over on the grass jes’ out o’ reach o’ his stroke, an’ he missed.  I grabbed my rifle an’ blazed at him as soon as I could get on my feet, but he had reached the shelter of the trees again an’ I missed him.”

“That’s about the meanest thing I ever heard,” said the boy.

“So I thought,” the Kentuckian answered, “an’ so the poor lad seemed to think too.  I saw he was tryin’ to speak, an’ I put my ear close to his lips, thinkin’ he might have some message he wanted to give.  But, tryin’ to look in the direction where Howkle had gone, he whispered, ’Don’t blame the Union.’  He was thinkin’ more o’ the credit o’ his side than of his own sufferin’s.”

“That was grit,” said Hamilton approvingly.  “Did he die, Uncle Eli?”

“Not a bit of it.  We got him back into our lines an’ he was exchanged, I believe.  Anyway, I know he was livin’ after the war, fo’ I saw his name once on a list o’ veterans.  But most o’ the boys were like that—­mostly young, too—­an’ men o’ the stripe of Isaac Howkle were very few.”

“But you got him in the end, didn’t you?”

The old mountaineer looked intently at the boy’s excited face.

“I didn’t,” he said, “an’ I don’ rightly know that it’s good for yo’ to be hearin’ all these things.  Yo’ might hold it against Jake Howkle.”

“That I wouldn’t,” protested Hamilton.  “Jake isn’t to blame for his father’s meanness.”

“That’s the right way to talk,” the old soldier agreed.  “Wa’al, if yo’ feel that way about it, I reckon thar’s no harm in my tellin’ yo’ the rest of it, now that I’ve got started.  When the war was all over an’ I got back hyeh, I remembered what had happened, an’ I sent word to Isaac Howkle that I didn’ trust him, an’ after what he had done I was reckonin’ that he was waitin’ his chance to get me, an’ that he’d better keep his own side o’ the mountain.”

“But, Uncle Eli,” said the boy, “that didn’t make a feud surely; that was only a warning.”

“I wasn’t reckonin’ to start a feud at all,” said the old man thoughtfully, “an’ it really never was one.  It was jes’ a personal difference between Isaac Howkle an’ me.  Thar was lots o’ times that I could have picked off either o’ his two brothers, but I was jes’ guardin’ myself against Isaac.”