l'
without end, ah-men. An' I've knowed many of them to put all his
three months' pay into a Sunday uniform for dress parade.

"Weepons? They've got the fines' in the worl' an' they don't think
they can bring down the Devil les' they shoot at him with a silver
bullet. Everything goes by red-tape with 'em, an' the ban'-wagon goes
in front.

"But I jined 'em," went on the old man, "an' I'll tell you why."

He paused--his voice trembled, and the good natured, bubbling humor,
which had floated down the smooth channel of his talk, vanished as
bubbles do when they float out into the deep pool beyond.

"Here," he said, lifting his arm, and showing the coat of the Captain
of Artillery--"this is what made me jine 'em. This is the coat of
Cap'n Tom, that saved my life at the risk of his own an' that was
struck down at Franklin; an' no common man of clay, as I be, ever
befo' had so God-like a man of marble to pattern after. I saw him in
the thick of the fight with his guns parked an' double-shotted, stop
our victorious rush almos' up to the river bank an' saved Grant's
army from defeat an' capture. I was on the other side, an' chief of
scouts for Albert Sidney Johnston, but I see him now in his blue
Yankee coat, fightin' his guns like the hero that he was. I was
foolish an' rushed in. I was captured an' in a prison pen, I drawed
the black ball with 'leven others that was sentenced to be shot. It
was Cap'n Tom who came to me in the early dawn of the day of the
execution an' said: 'They shall not shoot you, Bishop--put on my blue
coat an' go through the lines. I owe much to my country--I am giving
it all.

"'I owe something to you. They shall not shoot you like a dog. I will
tell my colonel what I have done to-morrow. If they think it is
treason they may shoot me instead. I have nothing to live for--you,
all. Go.'

"I have never seed him sence.

"We are mortals and must think as mortals. If we conceive of God, we
can conceive of Him only as in human form. An' I love to think that
the blessed an' brave an' sweet Christ looked like Cap'n Tom looked
in the early dawn of that morning when he come an' offered
himself,--captain that he was--to be shot, if need be, in my
place--so gran', so gentle, so brave, so forgivin', so like a
captain--so like God."

His voice had dropped lower and lower still. It died away in a
sobbing murmur, as a deep stream purls and its echo dies in a deeper
eddy.

"It was his church an' I jined it.