“Ah,” said the officer.  “They saw us down the valley.”

“I couldn’t see you,” said Miles.

The officer smiled.  “You’re not an Indian, Lieutenant.  Besides, they were out on the plain and had a farther view behind the ridge.”  And Miles answered not a word.

General Miles Morgan, full of years and of honors, has never but twice told the story of that night of forty years ago.  But he believes that when his time comes, and he goes to join the majority, he will know again the presence which guarded him through the blackness of it, and among the angel legions he looks to find an angel, a messenger, who was his friend.

THE AIDE-DE-CAMP

Age has a point or two in common with greatness; few willingly achieve it, indeed, but most have it thrust upon them, and some are born old.  But there are people who, beginning young, are young forever.  One might fancy that the careless fates who shape souls—­from cotton-batting, from stone, from wood and dynamite and cheese—­once in an aeon catch, by chance, a drop of the fountain of youth, and use it in their business, and the soul so made goes on bubbling and sparkling eternally, and gray dust of years cannot dim it.  It might be imagined, in another flight of fancy, that a spark of divine fire from the brazier of the immortals snaps loose once in a century and lodges in somebody, and is a heart—­with such a clean and happy flame burns sometimes a heart one knows.

On a January evening, in a room where were books and a blazing hearth, a man with a famous name and a long record told me a story, and through his blunt speech flashed in and out all the time the sparkle of the fire and the ripple of the fountain.  Unsuspecting, he betrayed every minute the queer thing that had happened to him—­how he had never grown up and his blood had never grown cold.  So that the story, as it fell in easy sequence, had a charm which was his and is hard to trap, yet it is too good a story to leave unwritten.  A picture goes with it, what I looked at as I listened:  a massive head on tremendous shoulders; bright white hair and a black bar of eyebrows, striking and dramatic; underneath, eyes dark and alive, a face deep red-and-brown with out of doors.  His voice had a rough command in it, because, I suppose, he had given many orders to men.  I tell the tale with this memory for a setting; the firelight, the soldierly presence, the gayety of youth echoing through it.

The fire had been forgotten as we talked, and I turned to see it dull and lifeless.  “It hasn’t gone out, however,” I said, and coughed as I swallowed smoke.  “There’s no smoke without some fire,” I poked the logs together.  “That’s an old saw; but it’s true all the same.”

“Old saws always are true,” said the General.  “If there isn’t something in them that people know is so they don’t get old—­they die young.  I believe in the ridden-to-death proverbs—­little pitchers with big ears—­cats with nine lives—­still waters running deep—­love at first sight, and the rest.  They’re true, too.”  His straight look challenged me to dispute him.