e soldiers!

And the darkies! How they flocked and stared at their soldier-brethren
with pathetic worship, dumb admiration, and, here and there, with a look
of contemptuous resentment that was most curious. And how those dusky
sons of Mars were drinking deep into their broad nostrils the incense
wafted to them from hedge and highway.

For a moment Grafton stopped still, looking.

"Great!"

Below the Majors' terrace stood an old sergeant, with a gray mustache
and a kind, blue eye. Each horse had his nose in a mouth-bag and was
contentedly munching corn, while a trooper affectionately curried him
from tip of ear to tip of tail.

"Horse ever first and man ever afterward is the trooper's law," said
Grafton.

"I suppose you've got the best colonel in the army," he added to the
soldier and with a wink at Crittenden.

"Yes, sir," said the guileless old Sergeant, quickly, and with perfect
seriousness. "We have, sir, and I'm not sayin' a wor-rd against the
rest, sir."

The Sergeant's voice was as kind as his face, and Grafton soon learned
that he was called "the Governor" throughout the regiment--that he was a
Kentuckian and a sharpshooter. He had seen twenty-seven years of
service, and his ambition had been to become a sergeant of ordnance. He
passed his examination finally, but he was then a little too old. That
almost broke the Sergeant's heart, but the hope of a fight, now, was
fast healing it.

"I'm from Kentucky, too," said Crittenden. The old soldier turned
quickly.

"I knew you were, sir."

This was too much for Grafton. "Now-how-on-earth--" and then he checked
himself--it was not his business.

"You're a Crittenden."

"That's right," laughed the Kentuckian. The Sergeant turned. A soldier
came up and asked some trifling question, with a searching look, Grafton
observed, at Crittenden. Everyone looked at that man twice, thought
Grafton, and he looked again himself. It was his manner, his bearing,
the way his head was set on his shoulders, the plastic force of his
striking face. But Crittenden saw only that the Sergeant answered the
soldier as though he were talking to a superior. He had been watching
the men closely--they might be his comrades some day--and, already, had
noticed, with increasing surprise, the character of the men whom he saw
as common soldiers--young, quiet, and above the average countryman in
address and intelligence--and this man's face surprised him still more,
as did his bearing. Hi