known only to the mountain-folk, which a picket at the top
could hold against an army. The position, well defended, was impregnable,
and it was well defended. This the general of the division knew
when he detailed the old Colonel and gave him his order to hold the pass
until relieved, and not let his guns fall into the hands of the enemy.
He knew both the Colonel and his battery. The battery was one of the oldest
in the army. It had been in the service since April, 1861,
and its commander had come to be known as "The Wheel Horse of his division".
He was, perhaps, the oldest officer of his rank in his branch of the service.
Although he had bitterly opposed secession, and was many years past
the age of service when the war came on, yet as soon as the President
called on the State for her quota of troops to coerce South Carolina,
he had raised and uniformed an artillery company, and offered it,
not to the President of the United States, but to the Governor of Virginia.

It is just at this point that he suddenly looms up to me as a soldier;
the relation he never wholly lost to me afterward, though I knew him
for many, many years of peace. His gray coat with the red facing
and the bars on the collar; his military cap; his gray flannel shirt --
it was the first time I ever saw him wear anything but immaculate linen --
his high boots; his horse caparisoned with a black, high-peaked saddle,
with crupper and breast-girth, instead of the light English hunting-saddle
to which I had been accustomed, all come before me now as if it were
but the other day. I remember but little beyond it, yet I remember,
as if it were yesterday, his leaving home, and the scenes
which immediately preceded it; the excitement created by the news
of the President's call for troops; the unanimous judgment that it meant war;
the immediate determination of the old Colonel, who had hitherto
opposed secession, that it must be met; the suppressed agitation
on the plantation, attendant upon the tender of his services