ith Fanny Peel, who was the daughter of another farmer in the
neighborhood, and a Sunday-school scholar of my mother's. I thought him
the greatest man in the world. He had a fight once with Absalom Turnell
when they were both youngsters, and, though Turnell was rather older and
much the heavier, whipped him completely. Halloway was a good soldier
and a good son, and when he came back from the war and won his wife, who
was a belle among the young farmers, and settled down with her on
his little place, which he proceeded to make a bower of roses and
fruit-trees, there was not a man in the neighborhood who did not rejoice
in his prosperity and wish him well. The Halloways had no children and,
as is often the case in such instances, they appeared to be more to each
other than are most husbands and wives. He always spoke of his wife
as if the sun rose and set in her. No matter where he might be in the
county, when night came he always rode home, saying that his wife would
be expecting him. 'Don't keer whether she 's asleep or not,' he used to
say to those who bantered him, 'she knows I 'm a-comin', and she always
hears my click on the gate-latch, and is waitin' for me.'

"It came to be well understood throughout the county.

"'I believe you are hen-pecked,' said a man to him one night.

"'I believe I am, George,' laughed Hallo-way, 'and by Jings! I like it,
too.'

"It was impossible to take offence at him, he was so good-natured. He
would get out of his bed in the middle of the night, hitch up his horse
and pull his bitterest enemy out of the mud. He had on an occasion
ridden all night through a blizzard to get a doctor for the wife of
a negro neighbor in a cabin near by who was suddenly taken ill. When
someone expressed admiration for it, especially as it was known that the
man had not long before been abusing Halloway to the provost-marshal,
who at that time was in supreme command, he said:

"'Well, what 's that got to do with it? Wa 'n 't the man 's wife sick?
I don't deserve no credit, though; if I had n't gone, my wife would n'
'a' let me come in her house.'

"He was an outspoken man, too, not afraid of the devil, and when he
believed a thing he spoke it, no matter whom it hit. In this way John
had been in trouble several times while we were under 'gun-rule';
and this, together with his personal character, had given him great
influence in the county, and made him a power. He was one of my most
ardent friends and s