“Well, I guess!” exclaimed Ephraim, “you’re general over everything now, but you’re not a mite bigger man to me than you was.”

The President took the compliment as it was meant.

“I found it easier to run an army than I do to run a country,” he said.

Ephraim’s blue eyes flamed with indignation.

“I don’t take no stock in the bull-dogs and the gold harness at Long Branch and—­and all them lies the dratted newspapers print about you,”—­Ephraim hammered his umbrella on the pavement as an expression of his feelings,—­“and what’s more, the people don’t.”

The President glanced at the senator again, and laughed a little, quietly.

“Thank you; Comrade,” he said.

“You’re a plain, common man,” continued Ephraim, paying the highest compliment known to rural New England; “the people think a sight of you, or they wouldn’t hev chose you twice, General.”

“So you were in the Wilderness?” said the President, adroitly changing the subject.

“Yes, General.  I was pressed into orderly duty the first day—­that’s when I saw you whittlin’ under the tree, and you didn’t seem to have no more consarn than if it had been a company drill.  Had a cigar then, too.  But the second day; May the 6th, I was with the regiment.  I’ll never forget that day,” said Ephraim, warming to the subject, “when we was fightin’ Ewell up and down the Orange Plank Road, playin’ hide-and-seek with the Johnnies in the woods.  You remember them woods, General?”

The President nodded, his cigar between his teeth.  He looked as though the scene were coming back to him.

“Never seen such woods,” said Ephraim, “scrub oak and pine and cedars and young stuff springin’ up until you couldn’t see the length of a company, and the Rebs jumpin’ and hollerin’ around and shoutin’ every which way.  After a while a lot of them saplings was mowed off clean by the bullets, and then the woods caught afire, and that was hell.”

“Were you wounded?” asked the President, quickly.

“I was hurt some, in the hip,” answered Ephraim.

“Some!” exclaimed Cynthia, “why, you have walked lame ever since.”  She knew the story by heart, but the recital of it never failed to stir her blood!  They carried him out just as he was going to be burned up, in a blanket hung from rifles, and he was in the hospital nine months, and had to come home for a while.”

“Cynthy,” said Ephraim in gentle reproof, “I callate the General don’t want to hear that.”

Cynthia flushed, but the President looked at her with an added interest.

“My dear young lady,” he said, “that seems to me the vital part of the story.  If I remember rightly,” he added, turning again to Ephraim, the Fifth Corps was on the Orange turnpike.  What brigade were you in?”

“The third brigade of the First Division,” answered Ephraim.

“Griffin’s,” said the President.  “There were several splendid New England regiments in that brigade.  I sent them with Griffin to help Sheridan at Five Forks.”