Andrew the Glad | Page 3

glad man with not balance enough to run the rail of any kind of heavy
track affairs."
"David," said the major with a sudden sadness coming into his voice
and eyes, "one of the greatest men I ever knew we called the glad
man--the boy's father, Andrew Sevier. We called him Andrew, the Glad.
Something has brought it all back to me to-day and with your laugh
you reminded me of him. The tragedy of it all!"
"I've always known what a sorrow it was to you, Major, and it is the
bitterness that is eating the heart out of Andy. What was it all about
exactly, sir? I have always wanted to ask you." David looked into the
major's stern old eyes with such a depth of sympathy in his young ones
that a barrier suddenly melted and with the tone of bestowing an honor
the old fire-eater told the tale of the sorrow of his youth.
"Gaming was in his blood, David, and we all knew it and protected him
from high play always. We were impoverished gentlemen, who were
building fences and restoring war-devastated lands, and we played in
our shabby club with a minimum stake and a maximum zest for the
sport. But that night we had no control over him. He had been playing
in secret with Peters Brown for weeks and had lost heavily. When we
had closed up the game, he called for the dice and challenged Brown to
square their account. They threw again and again with luck on the same
grim side. I saw him stake first his horses, then his bank account, and
lose.
"Hayes Donelson and I started to remonstrate but he silenced us with a
look. Then he drew a hurried transference of his Upper Cumberland
property and put it on the table. They threw again and he lost! Then he
smiled and with a steady hand wrote a conveyance of his home and
plantation, the last things he had, as we knew, and laid that on the
table."
"No, Major," exclaimed David with positive horror in his voice.

"Yes, it was madness, boy," answered the major. "Brown turned his
ivories and we all held our breath as we read his four-three. A mad joy
flamed in Andrew's face and he turned his cup with a steady wrist--and
rolled threes. We none of us looked at Brown, a man who had led
another man in whose veins ran a madness, where in his ran ice, on to
his ruin. We followed Andrew to the street to see him ride away in a
gray drizzle to a gambled home--and a wife and son.
"That morning deeds were drawn, signed, witnessed and delivered to
Brown in his office. Then--then"--the major's thin, powerful old hands
grasped the arm of his chair--"we found him in the twilight under the
clump of cedars that crowned the hill which overlooked Deep-mead
Farm--broad acres of land that the Seviers had had granted them from
Virginia--dead, his pistol under his shoulder and a smile on his face.
Just so he had looked as he rode at the head of our crack gray regiment
in that hell-reeking charge at Perryville, and it was such a smile we had
followed into the trenches at Franklin. Stalwart, dashing, joyous
Andrew, how we had all loved him, our man-of-smiles!"
"Can anything ever make it up to you, Major?" asked David softly. As
he spoke he refilled the major's pipe and handed it to him, not
appearing to notice how the lean old hand shook.
"You do, sir," answered the major with a spark coming back into his
eyes, "you and your gladness and the boy and his--sadness--and Phoebe
most of all. But don't let me keep you from your hen-roost defense--I
agree with you that a hen farm will be the cheapest course for you to
take with old Cross. Give him my respects, and good-by to you." The
major's dismissal was gallant, and David went his way with sympathy
and admiration in his gay heart for the old fire-eater whose ashes had
been so stirred.
The major resumed his contemplation of the fire. Hearty burning logs
make good companions for a philosopher like the major, and such
times when his depths were troubled he was wont to trust to them for
companionship.
But into any mood of absorption, no matter how deep, the major was

always ready to welcome Mrs. Matilda, and his expectations on the
subject of her adventures had been fully realized. As usual she had
begun her tale in the exact center of the adventure with full liberty left
herself to work back to the beginning or forward to the close.
"And the mystery of it all, Matilda, is the mystery of love--warm,
contradictory, cruel, human love that