“Yes,” said a voice behind him, “and you’ll find it just that way throughout the army.”

Crittenden turned in surprise, and the ubiquitous Grafton went on as though the little trick of thought-reading were too unimportant for notice.

“Let’s go down and take a look at things.  This is my last day,” Grafton went on, “and I’m out early.  I go to Tampa to-morrow.”

All the day before, as he travelled, Crittenden had seen the station thronged with eager countrymen—­that must have been the way it was in the old war, he thought—­and swarmed the thicker the farther he went south.  And now, as the two started down the hill, he could see in the dusty road that ran through the old battlefield Southern interest and sympathy taking visible shape.  For a hundred miles around, the human swarm had risen from the earth and was moving toward him on wagon, bicycle, horseback, foot; in omnibus, carriage, cart; in barges on wheels, with projecting additions, and other land-craft beyond classification or description.  And the people—­the American Southerners; rich whites, whites well-to-do, poor white trash; good country folks, valley farmers; mountaineers—­darkies, and the motley feminine horde that the soldier draws the world over—­all moving along the road as far as he could see, and interspersed here and there in the long, low cloud of dust with a clanking troop of horse or a red rumbling battery—­all coming to see the soldiers—­the soldiers!

And the darkies!  How they flocked and stared at their soldier-brethren with pathetic worship, dumb admiration, and, here and there, with a look of contemptuous resentment that was most curious.  And how those dusky sons of Mars were drinking deep into their broad nostrils the incense wafted to them from hedge and highway.

For a moment Grafton stopped still, looking.

“Great!”

Below the Majors’ terrace stood an old sergeant, with a gray mustache and a kind, blue eye.  Each horse had his nose in a mouth-bag and was contentedly munching corn, while a trooper affectionately curried him from tip of ear to tip of tail.

“Horse ever first and man ever afterward is the trooper’s law,” said Grafton.

“I suppose you’ve got the best colonel in the army,” he added to the soldier and with a wink at Crittenden.

“Yes, sir,” said the guileless old Sergeant, quickly, and with perfect seriousness.  “We have, sir, and I’m not sayin’ a wor-rd against the rest, sir.”

The Sergeant’s voice was as kind as his face, and Grafton soon learned that he was called “the Governor” throughout the regiment—­that he was a Kentuckian and a sharpshooter.  He had seen twenty-seven years of service, and his ambition had been to become a sergeant of ordnance.  He passed his examination finally, but he was then a little too old.  That almost broke the Sergeant’s heart, but the hope of a fight, now, was fast healing it.

“I’m from Kentucky, too,” said Crittenden.  The old soldier turned quickly.