Andrew the Glad

"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!"