That was different. The rules of the elders covered such a request. "Does a brother refuse help to a brother?" Cadnan asked. "We are from the same tree and the same time. Tell me what I must do."
"O, he was an ornament to the army," continued the unblushing Shorty, who hadn't had a good opportunity to lie in all the weeks that the Deacon had been with him, and wanted to exercise his old talent, to see whether he had lost it. "And the handsomest man! There wasn't a finer-looking man in the whole army. The Colonel used to get awfully jealous o' him, because everybody that'd come into camp 'd mistake him for the Colonel. He'd 'a' bin Colonel, too, if he'd only lived. But the poor fellow broke his heart. He fell in love with a girl somewhere up NorthPewter Hatchet, or some place like that. I never saw her, and don't know nothin' about her, but I heard that the boys from her place said that she was no match for him. She was only plain, ordinary-lookin'."