Page:Southern Life in Southern Literature.djvu/376

358 flank to flank, so the colonel and Peter were never so happy as when ruminating side by side.…

It was in the twilight of a late autumn day in the same year that nature gave the colonel the first direct intimation to prepare for the last summons. They had been passing along the garden walks, where a few pale flowers were trying to flourish up to the very winter's edge, and where the dry leaves had gathered unswept and rustled beneath their feet. All at once the colonel turned to Peter, who was a yard and a half behind, as usual, and said: "Give me your arm, Peter"; and thus the two, for the first time in all their lifetime walking abreast, passed slowly on.

"Peter," said the colonel, gravely, a minute or two later, "we are like two dried-up stalks of fodder. I wonder the Lord lets us live any longer."

"I reck'n He's managin' to use us some way, or we would n' be heah," said Peter.

"Well, all I have to say is, that if He 's using me, He can't be in much of a hurry for his work," replied the colonel.

"He uses snails, en I know we am ez slow ez dem" argued Peter, composedly.

"I don't know. I think a snail must have made more progress since the war than I have."

The idea of his uselessness seemed to weigh on him, for a little later he remarked, with a sort of mortified smile: "Do you think, Peter, that we would pass for what they call representative men of the New South?"

"We done had ou' day, Marse Rom," replied Peter. "We got to pass fur what we wuz. Mebbe de Lohd's got mo' use fur us yit 'n people has," he added, after a pause.

From this time on the colonel's strength gradually failed him; but it was not until the following spring that the end came. A night or two before his death his mind wandered backward,