"Do you mean that you are to be paid for associating with these people?" the judge asked.

"That's about it," was the answer. "I wouldn't do it if I wasn't going to make something out of it, would I? Not that there is any bargain, of course; but Pat McCann has dropped hints, and I know how easy it will be for them to throw things my way."

I didn't know you needed money so badly," said the judge. "I thought you were doing well at the bar."

"I'm doing well enough, I suppose," Van Dyne explained; "but I could do better. In fact, I must do better. I must have money. There's-well, there's Martha. She came out last fall, and I gave her a coming-out tea, of course. Well, I want her to have a good time. Mother had a good time when she was a girl, and why shouldn't Martha? She won't be nineteen again."

"Yes," said the judge, "your mother had a good time when she was a girl. Your father and I saw to that."

Martha's just got her first invitation to the Assembly," Van Dyne went on. "You should have seen how delighted she was, too; it did me good to see it. Mrs. Jimmy Suydam sent it to her. But all that will cost money; of course she's got to have a new gown and gloves and flowers and a carriage and so on. I don't begrudge it to her. I'm only too glad to give it to her. But I'm in debt now for that coming-out tea and for other things. I ran behind last year, and this year I shall spend more. That's why I've got to join the organization and pick up a reference now and then, and maybe a receivership by-and-by; and perhaps they'll elect me to an office, sooner or later. know I'm too young yet, but I'd like to be a judge too.

I

"So it is for your sister you are selling yourself, is it?" asked the elder man. "Do you think she would be willing if she knew?"

"I'm not selling myself!" declared the young man, laughing a little nervously. "I haven't signed any compact with my own blood amid a blaze of red fire."

"Do you think your sister would approve if she knew?" persisted the judge.

"Oh, but she won't know!" was the answer. "I'll admit she wouldn't like it over-much. She takes after father, and she has very strict ideas. You ought to

"I'm not sacrificing myself at all,” the young man declared. "I want some of the good things of life for myself. Besides, what do girls know about politics? They are always dreamy and impracticable. If they had their noses down to the grindstone of life for a little while it would sharpen their eyes, and they would see things differently."

"It will be a sad world when women like your sister and your mother see things differently, as you put it," the elder man retorted.

"If I want more money, I don't admit that it is any of Martha's business how I make it," Van Dyne asserted. "I'll let her have the spending of some of it-that will be her duty. I want her to have a summer in Europe too. She knows that mother was abroad a whole year when she was eighteen."

"I know that too," said the judge. "It was in Venice that your father and I first met her; she was feeding the pigeons in front of St. Mark's, and-"

The judge paused a moment, and then he laid his hand on Van Dyne's shoulder.

"Curtis," he continued, "if a thousand dollars now will help you out, or two thousand, or even five, if you need it, I shall be glad to let you have the money."

What matter about that?" returned the other. "I have nobody to leave it to."

"You were my father's friend and my mother's," said Van Dyne. "I would take money from you if I could take it from anybody. But I can't do that. You wouldn't in my place, would you?"

The judge did not answer this directly. "It is not easy to say what we should do if one were to stand in the other's place," he declared. "And if you change your mind, the money is ready for you whenever you want it."

About my joining the organization?" said Van Dyne. "Well, I'll think over what you have said. I don't want you to believe that I don't understand the kindness that prompted you to say what you did. I haven't really decided absolutely what I had best do."

"It is a decision you must make for yourself, after all," the judge declared. "I will not urge you further.”

Van Dyne drew back instinctively. Never before had Pat McCann's high hat seemed so very shiny to him, or Pat McCann's fur overcoat so very furry. The big diamond in Pat McCann's shirt front was concealed by the tightly buttoned coat; but Van Dyne knew that it was there all the same, and he detested it more than ever before.

"It's a dark morning it is," said McCann. "Will we take a little drop of something warm?"

"Thank you," returned the young lawyer, somewhat stiffly; "I never drink in the morning."

"No more do I," declared the other; "but it's a chill day this is. Well, and

"Perhaps you and Martha and Aunt Mary' could come and dine with me some night next week," the judge suggested. "I should like to hear about your sister's first experiences in society."

"Of course we will all come, with pleasure," said Van Dyne.

As the elder man walked away, the younger followed him with his eyes. Then he turned and went up the steps of the City Hall.

Almost at the top of the flight stood two men, who parted company as Van Dyne drew near. One of them waited for him to come up. The other started down, smiling at the young lawyer as they met, and saying: "Good - morning, Mr. Van Dyne. It's rain we're going to have, I'm thinking."

"Good-morning, Mr. O'Donnell," returned Van Dyne, roused from his rev

ery.

There's Mr. McCann waiting to have a word with you," cried O'Donnell over his shoulder, as he passed.

The young lawyer looked up and saw the other man at the top of the steps. He wanted time to think over his conversation with Judge Jerningham, and he had no desire for a talk just then with the district leader. Perhaps he unconsciously revealed this feeling in the coolness with which he returned the other's greeting, courteous as he always was, especially toward those whom he did not consider his equals.

"It's glad I am to see you, Mr. Van Dyne," said the politician, patting the young man on the shoulder as they shook hands.

boys? Terry O'Donnell and me, we was just talking about you and Mr. Suydam."

Van Dyne did not see why it should annoy him to know that he had been the subject of conversation between Pat McCann and Terry O'Donnell, but he was instantly aware of the annoyance. If he intended to throw in his lot with these people, he must look forward to many intimacies not quite to his liking.

"Oh, you were talking about me, were you?" he said.

"We was that," continued the district leader. "We want you to meet the boys and let them know you, don't you see? We want you to give them the glad hand."

When Van Dyne had used this slang phrase to the judge, it had seemed to him amusing; now it struck him as vulgar.

"We want you to jolly them up a bit," McCann went on. "The boys will be glad to know you better."

"Yes," was the monosyllabic response to this invitation.

The district leader looked at the young lawyer, and his manner changed.

"We'd like to get acquainted with you, Mr. Van Dyne," he said, "if you're going to be one of us."

"If I'm going to be one of you," Van Dyne repeated. "That's just the quesAm I going to be one of you?” "I thought we had settled all that last week," cried McCann.

tion.

"I don't think I told you that I would join you," Van Dyne declared, wondering just how far he had committed himself at that last interview.

"You told me you thought you would," McCann declared.

The district leader was generally wary and tactful. Among people of his own class he was a good judge of men; and he owed his position largely to his persuasive powers. But on this occasion he made a mistake, due perhaps in some measure to his perception of the other's assumption of superiority.

"And now you don't think so?" he retorted, swiftly. "Is that what it is? Well, it's for you to say, not me. I'm not begging any man to come into the organization if they don't want. But I can't

from Memphis to Ripley, and on in a direction east of south to Fulton in Mississippi, intersects almost at a right angle another important road, leading from Corinth through Rienzi, Booneville, Baidwyn, and in a southwesterly direction to Pontotoc.

With the exception of two or three cleared patches of land, not exceeding six acres in extent, immediately around Brice's house, the country, which is only slightly undulating, for a mile in every direction was, at the time of the battle, not only heavily timbered, but there was an undergrowth of black-jack and scrub-oak so dense that in places the troops could with difficulty force their way through; and being then in full leaf, it was possible to approach within a few yards without being seen. About one mile northeast of Brice's the Corinth road, with a wormfence on either hand for about a quarter of a mile, passed through a field, to the outskirts of which, on all sides, the dense undergrowth extended. This field was enclosed by a heavy rail fence, re-enforced on top with poles and brush wood. About the same distance on the highway leading from Brice's toward Ripley and Memphis the road-bed descended some twenty feet into the Tishomingo Creek bottom, along which stream there was a large corn-field, at that time in cultivation, and here this sluggish stream was spanned by a small wooden bridge.

At the urgent insistence of General

Sherman the expedition under Sturgis had been sent into Mississippi. Its first object was to engage the attention of Forrest, and thus prevent any interference from the much-dreaded cavalryman with Sherman's communications in Tennessee. Sherman and Johnston, two great mas ters in strategy, were playing a memorable game of war among the pine-clad hills of Georgia. Sherman, fiercely aggressive, with an army larger and better equipped, was slowly yet surely pushing Johnston back upon Atlanta. The latter, with matchless skill, was contesting every foot of ground, and inflicting heavy losses upon his antagonist; but, despite these losses, it was clear to the Union commander that he had this army of the Confederacy at his mercy if he could keep his troops well supplied from the North and West until the corn with which the Southern fields were teeming was sufficiently ripened to supply subsistence to his men and animals. The burden of his official despatches of that date was, keep "that devil Forrest" (as he termed him) from my rear, and I will take care of Johnston in my front.

His anxiety from this source became at last so great that he went to the extreme of offering one of his brigadier-generals a major-general's commission if he would kill Forrest. "It must be done, if it costs ten thousand lives and breaks the Treasury."* In case the wily fox could not be killed or crippled, he must be kept busy where he was.

Starting from Memphis on the 1st of June, with a train of 250 wagons and ambulances, General Sturgis, by slow marches over roads made difficult by frequent rains, had, at dark on the 9th of June, concentrated his entire command at Stubbs's farm, on the Ripley and Fulton highway, nine miles north of Brice's cross-roads.

Forrest, surmising from the direction the Federal column had taken that its object would be the destruction of the Mobile and Ohio Railway from Corinth southward, had posted his troops in various detachments along this road from Rienzi to Baldwyn.

At 9 o'clock on this night he received information of Sturgis's encampment at Stubbs's place, and immediately ordered each detachment of his command to prepare three days' rations, to issue the full

* Official Records.

complement of ammunition, and to move at 4 o'clock in the morning, as rapidly as the condition of the roads would permit, in the direction of Brice's crossroads. It had rained almost daily for a week, and on the afternoon and night of the 9th it came down in torrents until after midnight, but at daybreak on the morning of the 10th of June the clouds had vanished, and when the sun came up it ushered in one of those hot, humid, and depressing days characteristic of this season of the year in this section of the South.

It will thus be seen that, in order to reach the battle-field, Bell's brigade, which formed one-half of Forrest's command, would have to march from Rienzi, twenty-five miles; Rucker's brigade, and Morton's and Rice's twelve pieces, eighteen miles, from Booneville; and the brigades of Johnson and Lyon, from Baldwyn, six miles to Brice's-while the army of Sturgis concentrated at Stubbs's was within nine miles of the cross-roads.

By daylight the Confederates were in motion. Colonel E. W. Rucker narrates that General Forrest overtook him early in the morning, about 7 o'clock, and rode by his side. He told Rucker that he intended to attack the Federals at Brice's. "I know they greatly outnumber the troops I have at hand, but the road along which they will march is narrow and muddy; they will make slow progress. The country is densely wooded, and the undergrowth so heavy that when we strike them they will not know how few men we have. Their cavalry will move out ahead of the infantry, and should reach the crossroads three hours in advance. We can whip their cavalry in that time. As soon as the fight opens they will send back to have the infantry hurried up. It is going to be as hot as hell, and coming on a run for five or six miles over such roads, their infantry will be so tired out we will ride right over them. I want everything to move up as fast as possible. I will go ahead with Lyon and the Escort and open the fight."*

At 5.30 the Union cavalry under Grierson mounted their horses and moved out in the direction of Brice's. With fateful leisure the infantry cooked their breakfast, and did not march until 7 o'clock. The advance guard of Waring's brigade of Grierson's division encountered the * MSS. in possession of the writer.

Confederate outposts at the Tishomingo Creek bridge, drove these away, reached Brice's cross-roads at 9.45, and pursued the flying Confederates, who, turning to the left at Brice's, ran in the direction of Baldwyn. Along this road Waring proceeded for a mile, until he came to the edge of the field through which it runs, and here he encountered the advance of Lyon's brigade, which, under Captain H. A. Tyler, had just arrived upon the opposite side of this clearing, about four hundred yards distant.

By 10 o'clock, when Lyon had thrown out his skirmishers, Forrest in person came up with his Escort, eighty- five strong, and with Gartrell's company of fifty men, and took command of Lyon's troops, which numbered 800 rifles.

Grierson, satisfied that the Confederates were in considerable strength, dismounted Waring's brigade (1450 strong), which he posted behind the fence in the edge of the dense timber, about equally divided on the north and south side of the road along which Forrest was advancing. Two rifle guns and two howitzers attached to this brigade were thrown into position on a slight elevation just behind his line, and one hundred picked men armed with revolving-rifles were sent forward and concealed in the fence corners of the lane, about one hundred yards in advance.

To the right of Waring was dismounted Grierson's other brigade, under Winslow (numbering 1750), and the extreme right of this portion of the Union line was slightly "refused," or drawn back, in the direction of Brice's house. It will be seen that at this (for General Forrest) critical moment General Grierson had on the field 3200 cavalry, with four pieces of artillery in position and six others in reserve, confronted, four hundred yards away, by 800 mounted troops of Lyon's brigade, with 135 men on Escort duty, and with no Confederate artillery within eight miles.

Forrest was naturally an offensive fighter. He rarely stood to receive an attack. If his troops were mounted and the enemy moved first upon him, he always advanced to meet their charge. In a memorable interview with a Federal officer he said he would "give more for fifteen minutes of bulge on the enemy than for a week of tactics." He believed that one man in motion was worth two standing to receive an attack.

When he realized how strong the enemy in his immediate front were, his chief anxiety was that they might charge in force and run over his small command. Rucker was still some two miles in the rear, and Johnson was yet behind him. He immediately had Lyon's troops dismounted and thrown into line, and their position behind the fence strengthened by brush and logs. To prevent Grierson from attacking, it was important to make a show of force, and, with characteristic effrontery, having alternate panels of the worm - fence thrown down, he ordered Lyon to make a demonstration by advancing from the edge of the woods into the open field. Lyon threw out a double line of skirmishers, and marched boldly toward the enemy's position.

That Forrest's advance was "pure bluff" should have been clear to Grierson, for Lyon's right just reached the Baldwyn road, while his left extended only a little beyond the junction of Waring's and Winslow's brigades. He was thus widely overlapped on either flank.

Major E. Hunn Hanson, of Waring's brigade, says of this movement, "The Confederate line advancing was shorter than our own, its left ending in front of the left and centre of Winslow's brigade."*

With artillery and small- arms the Union line opened upon the Confederates, who kept up their feigned attack for about half an hour, when they withdrew, without confusion, to the edge of the woods from which they had started, and there resumed their position behind the "lay-outs."

Major Hanson (above quoted) says, "The Confederates retired, with but little disorder, to the edge of the woods, and kept up a skirmish fire at long range for some time."

It was at this moment that Colonel E. W. Rucker, with his brigade of 700 mounted men, came on the scene. When within two miles of Lyon's position, hearing the cannonade, he put spurs to his horses and went rapidly forward with his hardy riders to the relief of his chieftain.

Forrest at once dismounted two of Rucker's regiments, the Seventh Tennessee and Chalmers's Eighteenth Mississippi Battalion, placing them in line to the left of Lyon's troops, opposing the centre of Winslow's brigade. The Eighth Mis*Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Vol. IV.