Page:The partisan leader- a novel, and an apocalypse of the origin and struggles of the southern confederacy (IA partisanleadernotucker).pdf/11

 our leading men told us; for I heerd Gov. Floyd make a speach once, and tell that these things was gwine to be, and pretty much how they was gwine to come about."

"But what would you think if I were to tell you further that he has your name in the book? that he thinks Virginia hesitated till she was nearly overrun by the enemy, that we are sustaining a sort of guerilla, 'bush-whacking' warfare out here in the mountains, and that you are a kind of lieutenant, exerting a valuable influence among your mountain neighbours?"

"Well, I'd think that was strange, too, but he know'd me in the war of twelve!"

"I have the book along, Mr. Witt."

"I'd be mighty much obleged to you if you'd read it to me."

I produced the book, and complied with his request by reading the first two or three chapters. The description of the road, the stream, the mountains, and the surroundings of his father's house, were endorsed by an occasional "that's so, sir." When his name was introduced, and the description of his person, he said:

"He must a meant me, sir."

I suggested, "He supposes, Mr. Witt, that these things occurred some twelve or fifteen years ago: Could you not have borne, at that time of life, such a part as he attributes to you?"

"I reckon I could, sir; for I ought to be mighty thankful that though I am failin now, I have been a very powerful man."

When I read to him his remarks, at the dinner, about the scarcity of "salt," "and the Yankees holding James river," he added, with an air of grave astonishment—

"I say that to you now, sir!"

I could but regard him with a kind of romantic veneration, as a real character in a great prophetic story, whose thrilling events have been essentially fulfilled, and in the realization of which, evincing the same characteristics and endorsing the same sentiments which it was supposed he would maintain. All that I learned from his neighbors tended but to show that precisely such circumstances as those supposed would probably have developed precisely such a character as he is presumed to have sustained. I may add, as a pleasing little episode, that, though for these forty years "they have wedded been," he has never been known to depart or return, on a few miles trip, without kissing his "darling Katie."

In company with a friend, I spent a day traversing the mountains. Fanned by the pure air, seven degrees cooler than in the sultry vale beneath, bearing upon its ever waving wings the sweets of a thousand