t the dream of the overseer.

The rest is soon told: After the battle of Shiloh, Hillard Watts,
Chief of Johnston's scouts, was captured and sent to Camp Chase.
Scarcely had he arrived before orders came that twelve prisoners
should be shot, by lot, in retaliation for the same number of Federal
prisoners which had been executed, it was said, unjustly, by
Confederates. The overseer drew one of the black balls. Then happened
one of those acts of heroism which now and then occur, perhaps, to
redeem war of the base and bloody.

On the morning before the execution, at daylight, Thomas Travis
arrived and made arrangements to save his friend at the risk of his
own life and reputation. It was a desperate chance and he acted
quickly. For Hillard Watts went out a free man dressed in the blue
uniform of the Captain of Artillery.

The interposition of the great-hearted Lincoln alone saved the young
officer from being shot.

The yellow military order bearing the words of the martyred President
is preserved to-day in the library of The Gaffs:

"_I present this young man as a Christmas gift to my old friend, his
grandsire, Colonel Jeremiah Travis. The man who could fight his guns
as he did at Shiloh, and could offer to die for a friend, is good
enough to receive pardon, for anything he may have done or may do,
from_

"A. LINCOLN."

Afterwards came Franklin and the news that Captain Tom had been
killed.

CHAPTER III

FRANKLIN

But General Jeremiah Travis could not keep out of the war; for toward
the last, when Hood's army marched into Tennessee the Confederacy
called for everything--even old age.

And so there rode out of the gates of The Gaffs a white-haired old
man, who sat his superb horse well. He was followed by a negro on a
mule.

They were General Jeremiah Travis and his body-servant, Bisco.

"I have come to fight for my state," said General Travis to the
Confederate General.

"An' I am gwine to take keer of old marster suh," said Bisco as he
stuck to his saddle girth.

It was the middle of the afternoon of the last day of November--and
also the last day of many a gallant life--when Hood's tired army
marched over the brow of the high ridge of hills that looked down on
the town of Franklin, in front of which, from railroad to river,
behind a long semicircular breastwork lay Schofield's determined
army. It was a beautiful view, and as plain as looking down from the
gallery into the pit of an amphithe