Perhaps it was irreverent, but that was what Montague had always thought of, ever since he had first laughed over the tale his father told.  It had happened one January afternoon in the Wilderness, during the terrible battle of Chancellorsville, when Montague’s father had been a rising young staff-officer, and it had fallen to his lot to carry to Major Thorne what was surely the most terrifying order that ever a cavalry officer received.  It was in the crisis of the conflict, when the Army of the Potomac was reeling before the onslaught of Stonewall Jackson’s columns.  There was no one to stop them-and yet they must be stopped, for the whole right wing of the army was going.  So that cavalry regiment had charged full tilt through the thickets, and into a solid wall of infantry and artillery.  The crash of their volley was blinding—­and horses wore fairly shot to fragments; and the Major’s horse, with its lower jaw torn off, had plunged madly away and left its rider hanging in the aforementioned grape-vine.  After he had kicked himself loose, it was to find himself in an arena where pain-maddened horses and frenzied men raced about amid a rain of minie-balls and canister.  And in this inferno the gallant Major had captured a horse, and rallied the remains of his shattered command, and held the line until help came-and then helped to hold it, all through the afternoon and the twilight and the night, against charge after charge.—­And now to stand and gaze at this stout and red-nosed little personage, and realize that these mighty deeds had been his!

Then, even while Montague was returning his hand-clasp and telling him of his pleasure, the Major’s eye caught some one across the room, and he called eagerly, “Colonel Anderson!  Colonel Anderson!”

And this was the heroic Jack Anderson!  “Parson” Anderson, the men had called him, because he always prayed before everything he did.  Prayers at each mess,—­a prayer-meeting in the evening,—­and then rumour said the Colonel prayed on while his men slept.  With his battery of artillery trained to perfection under three years of divine guidance, the gallant Colonel had stood in the line of battle at Cold Harbour—­name of frightful memory!—­and when the enemy had swarmed out of their intrenchments and swept back the whole line just beyond him, his battery had stood like a cape in a storm-beaten ocean, attacked on two sides at once; and for the half-hour that elapsed before infantry support came up, the Colonel had ridden slowly up and down his line, repeating in calm and godly accents, “Give ’em hell, boys—­give ’em hell!”—­The Colonel’s hand trembled now as he held it out, and his voice was shrill and cracked as he told what pleasure it gave him to meet General Montague’s son.

“Why have we never seen you before?” asked Major Thorne.  Montague replied that he had spent all his life in Mississippi—­his father having married a Southern woman after the war.  Once every year the General had come to New York to attend the reunion of the Loyal Legion of the State; but some one had had to stay at home with his mother, Montague explained.