II


The man of whom I am speaking was a tallish, slim young fellow, shaped
well enough, though a trifle limp for a Louisianian in the Mississippi
(Confederate) cavalry. Some camp wag had fastened on him the nickname of
"Crackedfiddle." Our acquaintance began more than a year before Lee's
surrender; but Gregory came out of the war without any startling record,
and the main thing I tell of him occurred some years later.

I never saw him under arms or in uniform. I met him first at the house of
a planter, where I was making the most of a flesh-wound, and was, myself,
in uniform simply because I hadn't any other clothes. There were pretty
girls in the house, and as his friends and fellow-visitors--except me--
wore the gilt bars of commissioned rank on their gray collars, and he, as
a private, had done nothing glorious, his appearance was always in
civilian's dress. Black he wore, from head to foot, in the cut fashionable
in New Orleans when the war brought fashion to a stand: coat-waist high,
skirt solemnly long; sleeves and trousers small at the hands and feet, and
puffed out--phew! in the middle. The whole scheme was dandyish, dashing,
zou-zou; and when he appeared in it, dark, good-looking, loose,
languorous, slow to smile and slower to speak, it was--confusing.

One sunset hour as I sat alone on the planter's veranda immersed in a
romance, I noticed, too late to offer any serviceable warning, this
impressive black suit and its ungenerously nicknamed contents coming in at
the gate unprotected. Dogs, in the South, in those times, were not the
caressed and harmless creatures now so common. A Mississippi planter's