that
don' do any good, but after which thar's always good men lef' lyin' on
the ground. We had driven 'em back a bit, an' I was comin' in when I saw
a lad--he didn't look more'n about fifteen--lyin' in a heap an'
groanin'. Knowin' a drink would do him more good than an'thin' else, I
reached for my canteen, an' stooped down. Jes' about then, a horseman
dashed out o' the scrub an', almos' befo' I could think o' what was
comin', he struck at me with his sabre."

"When you were giving drink to a wounded soldier!" cried Hamilton
indignantly. "What a cowardly trick!"

"It was ol' Isaac Howkle," nodded his uncle, "an' I s'pose he reckoned
this was a chance to get even on the ol' grudge. But I rolled over on
the grass jes' out o' reach o' his stroke, an' he missed. I grabbed my
rifle an' blazed at him as soon as I could get on my feet, but he had
reached the shelter of the trees again an' I missed him."

"That's about the meanest thing I ever heard," said the boy.

"So I thought," the Kentuckian answered, "an' so the poor lad seemed to
think too. I saw he was tryin' to speak, an' I put my ear close to his
lips, thinkin' he might have some message he wanted to give. But, tryin'
to look in the direction where Howkle had gone, he whispered, 'Don't
blame the Union.' He was thinkin' more o' the credit o' his side than of
his own sufferin's."

"That was grit," said Hamilton approvingly. "Did he die, Uncle Eli?"

"Not a bit of it. We got him back into our lines an' he was exchanged, I
believe. Anyway, I know he was livin' after the war, fo' I saw his name
once on a list o' veterans. But most o' the boys were like that--mostly
young, too--an' men o' the stripe of Isaac Howkle were very few."

"But you got him in the end, didn't you?"

The old mountaineer looked intently at the boy's excited face.

"I didn't," he said, "an' I don' rightly know that it's good for yo' to
be hearin' all these things. Yo' might hold it against Jake Howkle."

"That I wouldn't," protested Hamilton. "Jake isn't to blame for his
father's meanness."

"That's the right way to talk," the old soldier agreed. "Wa'al, if yo'
feel that way about it, I reckon thar's no harm in my tellin' yo' the
rest of it, now that I've got started. When the war was all over an' I
got back hyeh, I remembered what had happened, an' I sent word to Isaac
Howkle that I didn' trust him, an' after what he had done I was
reckonin' that he was waitin' his chance to get me, an' th