"I wish I'd been alive to go
with father to the war," he cried.
Captain Chunn was delighted. "You doggoned little rebel!"
"I didn't know we used that word in the South' sir."
Chunn tugged at his goatee and laughed. "We're not in the South,
David."
The former Confederate asked questions to piece out his patchwork
information. He knew that Philip Farnum had come out of the war
with a constitution weakened by the hardships of the service.
Rumors had drifted to him that the taste for liquor acquired in
camp as an antidote for sickness had grown upon his comrade and
finally overcome him. From Jeff he learned that after his father's
death the widow had sold her mortgaged place and moved to the
Pacific Coast. She had invested the few hundreds left her in some
river-bottom lots at Verden and had later discovered that an
unscrupulous real estate dealer had unloaded upon her worthless
property. The patched and threadbare clothes of the boy told him
that from a worldly point of view the affairs of the Farnums were
at ebb tide.
"Did . . . did you know father very well?" Jeff asked tremulously.
Chunn looked down at the thin dark face of the boy walking beside
him and was moved to lay a hand on his shoulder.
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