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.