“Tell me my name!” responded Dick in astonishment. “Of course you can’t do it! You never saw or heard of me before.”
“Mebbe no,” replied Jarvis, with calm confidence, “but all the same your name is Dick Mason, and you come from a town in Kentucky called Pendleton. You’ve been serving with the Yanks in the East, an’ you’ve a cousin, named Harry Kenton, who’s been servin’ there also, but with the Johnnies. Now, am I a good guesser or am I just a plum’ ignorant fool?”
Dick stared at him in deepening amazement.
“You do more than guess,” he replied. “You know. Everything that you said is true.”
“Tell me this,” said Jarvis. “Was that cousin of yours, Harry Kenton, killed in the big battle at Bull Run? I’ve been tremenjeously anxious about him ever since I heard of that terrible fight.”
“He was not. I have not seen him since, but I have definite news now that he passed safely through the battle.”
Sam Jarvis and his nephew Ike breathed deep sighs of relief.
“I’m mighty glad to hear it,” said Jarvis, “I shorely liked that boy, Harry, an’ I think I’ll like you about as well. It don’t matter to me that you’re on different sides, bein’ as I ain’t on any side at all myself, nor is this lunkhead, Ike, my nephew.”
“How on earth did you know me?”
“‘Light, an’ come into the house an’ I’ll tell you. You an’ your pardners look cold an’ hungry. There ain’t danger of anybody taking your hosses, ’cause you can hitch ’em right at the front door. Besides, I’ve got an old grandmother in the house, who’d like mighty well to see you, Mr. Mason.”
Dick concluded that it was useless to ask any more questions just yet, and he, Warner and the sergeant, dismounting and leading their horses, walked toward the house with Jarvis and Ike. Jarvis, who seemed singularly cheerful, lifted up his voice and sang:
Thou wilt come no more, gentle Annie,
Like a flower, thy spirit did depart,
Thou art gone, alas! like the many
That have bloomed in the summer of my heart.
Shall we never more behold thee?
Never hear thy winning voice again?
When the spring time comes, gentle Annie?
When the wild flowers are scattered o’er the plain?
It seemed to Dick that the man sang spontaneously, and the deep, mellow voice always came back in faint and dying echoes that moved him in a singular manner. All at once the war with its passions and carnage floated away. Here was a little valley fenced in from the battle-world in which he had been living. He breathed deeply and as the eyes of Jarvis caught his a sympathetic glance passed between them.
“Yes,” said Jarvis, as if he understood completely, “the war goes around us. There is nothing to fight about here. But come into the house. This is my sister, the mother of that lunkhead, Ike, and here is my grandmother.”
He paused before the bent figure of an old, old woman, sitting in a rocking chair beside the chimney, beside which a fire glowed and blazed. Her chin rested on one hand, and she was staring into the coals.
“Grandmother,” said Jarvis very gently, “the great-grandson of the great Henry Ware that you used to know was here last spring, and now the great-grandson of his friend, Paul Cotter, has come, too.”
The withered form straightened and she stood up. Fire came into the old, old eyes that regarded Dick so intently.
“Aye,” she said, “you speak the truth, grandson. It is Paul Cotter’s own face. A gentle man he was, but brave, and the greatest scholar. I should have known that when Henry Ware’s great-grandson came Paul Cotter’s, too, would come soon. I am proud for this house to have sheltered you both.”
She put both her hands on his shoulders, and stood up very straight, her face close to his. She was a tall woman, above the average height of man, and her eyes were on a level with Dick’s.
“It is true,” she said, “it is he over again. The eyes are his, and the mouth and the nose are the same. This house is yours while you choose to remain, and my grandchildren and my great-grandson will do for you whatever you wish.”