nothing would do but Chadwick must tell that tragic story. When it was concluded, one of the ladies inquired if Danny Lemmons had a twin brother.
"No 'm, not that I know of," said Chadwick, laughing at the agility with which the feminine mind can leave tragedy and fly back to inconsequential trifles; "but a shell ain't got time to choose betwixt folks that favor."
You 've heard the story of Danny Lemmons and Cassy Tatum, and so it is unnecessary to repeat the details. They are all true enough, but so antique is the war that they strike the modern ear as lightly as if they had been filched from a manuscript found in the pocket of a stranded play-actor. It is enough to say here that Danny Lemmons was a hunchback—a mountaineer—who married Cassy Tatum, and who, when Cassy left him, followed her to Atlanta, making his way through the Federal and Confederate lines. He had stolen Cassy's baby—if a man can be said to steal his own child—and was on his way back to the Federal lines, pursued by his wife, by Private Chadwick, and one or two other soldiers, when he was killed by the explosion of a shell.
