The Red Badge of Courage

Published：2026-08-02 12:22:06 Source: best remote control cars for 10 year olds Author: Card Games

The farm playsets for 12 year olds under 20 dollarsRed Badge of Courage

by Stephen Crane (1871-1900)

An Episode of the American Civil War

Contents

Chapter I.

The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed anarmy stretched out on the hills, resting. As the landscape changed from brownto green, the army awakened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the noiseof rumors. It cast its eyes upon the roads, which were growing from longtroughs of liquid mud to proper thoroughfares. A river, amber-tinted in theshadow of its banks, purled at the army’s feet; and at night, when thestream had become of a sorrowful blackness, one could see across it the red,eyelike gleam of hostile camp-fires set in the low brows of distant hills.

Once a certain tall soldier developed virtues and went resolutely to wash ashirt. He came flying back from a brook waving his garment bannerlike. He wasswelled with a tale he had heard from a reliable friend, who had heard it froma truthful cavalryman, who had heard it from his trustworthy brother, one ofthe orderlies at division headquarters. He adopted the important air of aherald in red and gold.

“We’re goin’ t’ move t’morrah—sure,”he said pompously to a group in the company street. “We’regoin’ ’way up the river, cut across, an’ come around inbehint ’em.”

To his attentive audience he drew a loud and elaborate plan of a very brilliantcampaign. When he had finished, the blue-clothed men scattered into smallarguing groups between the rows of squat brown huts. A negro teamster who hadbeen dancing upon a cracker box with the hilarious encouragement of twoscoresoldiers was deserted. He sat mournfully down. Smoke drifted lazily from amultitude of quaint chimneys.

“It’s a lie! that’s all it is—a thunderin’lie!” said another private loudly. His smooth face was flushed, and hishands were thrust sulkily into his trouser’s pockets. He took the matteras an affront to him. “I don’t believe the derned old army’sever going to move. We’re set. I’ve got ready to move eight timesin the last two weeks, and we ain’t moved yet.”

The tall soldier felt called upon to defend the truth of a rumor he himself hadintroduced. He and the loud one came near to fighting over it.

A corporal began to swear before the assemblage. He had just put a costly boardfloor in his house, he said. During the early spring he had refrained fromadding extensively to the comfort of his environment because he had felt thatthe army might start on the march at any moment. Of late, however, he had beenimpressed that they were in a sort of eternal camp.

Many of the men engaged in a spirited debate. One outlined in a peculiarlylucid manner all the plans of the commanding general. He was opposed by men whoadvocated that there were other plans of campaign. They clamored at each other,numbers making futile bids for the popular attention. Meanwhile, the soldierwho had fetched the rumor bustled about with much importance. He wascontinually assailed by questions.

“What’s up, Jim?”

“Th’army’s goin’ t’ move.”

“Ah, what yeh talkin’ about? How yeh know it is?”

“Well, yeh kin b’lieve me er not, jest as yeh like. I don’tcare a hang.”

There was much food for thought in the manner in which he replied. He came nearto convincing them by disdaining to produce proofs. They grew much excited overit.

There was a youthful private who listened with eager ears to the words of thetall soldier and to the varied comments of his comrades. After receiving a fillof discussions concerning marches and attacks, he went to his hut and crawledthrough an intricate hole that served it as a door. He wished to be alone withsome new thoughts that had lately come to him.

He lay down on a wide bunk that stretched across the end of the room. In theother end, cracker boxes were made to serve as furniture. They were groupedabout the fireplace. A picture from an illustrated weekly was upon the logwalls, and three rifles were paralleled on pegs. Equipments hung on handyprojections, and some tin dishes lay upon a small pile of firewood. A foldedtent was serving as a roof. The sunlight, without, beating upon it, made itglow a light yellow shade. A small window shot an oblique square of whiterlight upon the cluttered floor. The smoke from the fire at times neglected theclay chimney and wreathed into the room, and this flimsy chimney of clay andsticks made endless threats to set ablaze the whole establishment.

The youth was in a little trance of astonishment. So they were at last going tofight. On the morrow, perhaps, there would be a battle, and he would be in it.For a time he was obliged to labor to make himself believe. He could not acceptwith assurance an omen that he was about to mingle in one of those greataffairs of the earth.

He had, of course, dreamed of battles all his life—of vague and bloodyconflicts that had thrilled him with their sweep and fire. In visions he hadseen himself in many struggles. He had imagined peoples secure in the shadow ofhis eagle-eyed prowess. But awake he had regarded battles as crimson blotcheson the pages of the past. He had put them as things of the bygone with histhought-images of heavy crowns and high castles. There was a portion of theworld’s history which he had regarded as the time of wars, but it, hethought, had been long gone over the horizon and had disappeared forever.

From his home his youthful eyes had looked upon the war in his own country withdistrust. It must be some sort of a play affair. He had long despaired ofwitnessing a Greeklike struggle. Such would be no more, he had said. Men werebetter, or more timid. Secular and religious education had effaced thethroat-grappling instinct, or else firm finance held in check the passions.

He had burned several times to enlist. Tales of great movements shook the land.They might not be distinctly Homeric, but there seemed to be much glory inthem. He had read of marches, sieges, conflicts, and he had longed to see itall. His busy mind had drawn for him large pictures extravagant in color, luridwith breathless deeds.

But his mother had discouraged him. She had affected to look with some contemptupon the quality of his war ardor and patriotism. She could calmly seat herselfand with no apparent difficulty give him many hundreds of reasons why he was ofvastly more importance on the farm than on the field of battle. She had hadcertain ways of expression that told him that her statements on the subjectcame from a deep conviction. Moreover, on her side, was his belief that herethical motive in the argument was impregnable.

At last, however, he had made firm rebellion against this yellow light thrownupon the color of his ambitions. The newspapers, the gossip of the village, hisown picturings, had aroused him to an uncheckable degree. They were in truthfighting finely down there. Almost every day the newspaper printed accounts ofa decisive victory.

One night, as he lay in bed, the winds had carried to him the clangoring of thechurch bell as some enthusiast jerked the rope frantically to tell the twistednews of a great battle. This voice of the people rejoicing in the night hadmade him shiver in a prolonged ecstasy of excitement. Later, he had gone downto his mother’s room and had spoken thus: “Ma, I’m going toenlist.”

“Henry, don’t you be a fool,” his mother had replied. She hadthen covered her face with the quilt. There was an end to the matter for thatnight.

Nevertheless, the next morning he had gone to a town that was near hismother’s farm and had enlisted in a company that was forming there. Whenhe had returned home his mother was milking the brindle cow. Four others stoodwaiting. “Ma, I’ve enlisted,” he had said to her diffidently.There was a short silence. “The Lord’s will be done, Henry,”she had finally replied, and had then continued to milk the brindle cow.

When he had stood in the doorway with his soldier’s clothes on his back,and with the light of excitement and expectancy in his eyes almost defeatingthe glow of regret for the home bonds, he had seen two tears leaving theirtrails on his mother’s scarred cheeks.

Still, she had disappointed him by saying nothing whatever about returning withhis shield or on it. He had privately primed himself for a beautiful scene. Hehad prepared certain sentences which he thought could be used with touchingeffect. But her words destroyed his plans. She had doggedly peeled potatoes andaddressed him as follows: “You watch out, Henry, an’ take good careof yerself in this here fighting business—you watch, an’ take goodcare of yerself. Don’t go a-thinkin’ you can lick the hull rebelarmy at the start, because yeh can’t. Yer jest one little feller amongsta hull lot of others, and yeh’ve got to keep quiet an’ do what theytell yeh. I know how you are, Henry.

“I’ve knet yeh eight pair of socks, Henry, and I’ve put inall yer best shirts, because I want my boy to be jest as warm andcomf’able as anybody in the army. Whenever they get holes in ’em, Iwant yeh to send ’em right-away back to me, so’s I kin dern’em.

“An’ allus be careful an’ choose yer comp’ny.There’s lots of bad men in the army, Henry. The army makes ’emwild, and they like nothing better than the job of leading off a young fellerlike you, as ain’t never been away from home much and has allus had amother, an’ a-learning ’em to drink and swear. Keep clear of themfolks, Henry. I don’t want yeh to ever do anything, Henry, that yeh wouldbe ’shamed to let me know about. Jest think as if I was a-watchin’yeh. If yeh keep that in yer mind allus, I guess yeh’ll come out aboutright.

“Yeh must allus remember yer father, too, child, an’ remember henever drunk a drop of licker in his life, and seldom swore a cross oath.

“I don’t know what else to tell yeh, Henry, excepting that yeh mustnever do no shirking, child, on my account. If so be a time comes when yeh haveto be kilt or do a mean thing, why, Henry, don’t think of anything’cept what’s right, because there’s many a woman has to bearup ’ginst sech things these times, and the Lord’ll take keer of usall.

“Don’t forgit about the socks and the shirts, child; and I’veput a cup of blackberry jam with yer bundle, because I know yeh like it aboveall things. Good-by, Henry. Watch out, and be a good boy.”

He had, of course, been impatient under the ordeal of this speech. It had notbeen quite what he expected, and he had borne it with an air of irritation. Hedeparted feeling vague relief.

Still, when he had looked back from the gate, he had seen his mother kneelingamong the potato parings. Her brown face, upraised, was stained with tears, andher spare form was quivering. He bowed his head and went on, feeling suddenlyashamed of his purposes.

From his home he had gone to the seminary to bid adieu to many schoolmates.They had thronged about him with wonder and admiration. He had felt the gulfnow between them and had swelled with calm pride. He and some of his fellowswho had donned blue were quite overwhelmed with privileges for all of oneafternoon, and it had been a very delicious thing. They had strutted.

A certain light-haired girl had made vivacious fun at his martial spirit, butthere was another and darker girl whom he had gazed at steadfastly, and hethought she grew demure and sad at sight of his blue and brass. As he hadwalked down the path between the rows of oaks, he had turned his head anddetected her at a window watching his departure. As he perceived her, she hadimmediately begun to stare up through the high tree branches at the sky. He hadseen a good deal of flurry and haste in her movement as she changed herattitude. He often thought of it.

On the way to Washington his spirit had soared. The regiment was fed andcaressed at station after station until the youth had believed that he must bea hero. There was a lavish expenditure of bread and cold meats, coffee, andpickles and cheese. As he basked in the smiles of the girls and was patted andcomplimented by the old men, he had felt growing within him the strength to domighty deeds of arms.

After complicated journeyings with many pauses, there had come months ofmonotonous life in a camp. He had had the belief that real war was a series ofdeath struggles with small time in between for sleep and meals; but since hisregiment had come to the field the army had done little but sit still and tryto keep warm.

He was brought then gradually back to his old ideas. Greeklike struggles wouldbe no more. Men were better, or more timid. Secular and religious education hadeffaced the throat-grappling instinct, or else firm finance held in check thepassions.

He had grown to regard himself merely as a part of a vast blue demonstration.His province was to look out, as far as he could, for his personal comfort. Forrecreation he could twiddle his thumbs and speculate on the thoughts which mustagitate the minds of the generals. Also, he was drilled and drilled andreviewed, and drilled and drilled and reviewed.

The only foes he had seen were some pickets along the river bank. They were asun-tanned, philosophical lot, who sometimes shot reflectively at the bluepickets. When reproached for this afterward, they usually expressed sorrow, andswore by their gods that the guns had exploded without their permission. Theyouth, on guard duty one night, conversed across the stream with one of them.He was a slightly ragged man, who spat skillfully between his shoes andpossessed a great fund of bland and infantile assurance. The youth liked himpersonally.

“Yank,” the other had informed him, “yer a right dum goodfeller.” This sentiment, floating to him upon the still air, had made himtemporarily regret war.

Various veterans had told him tales. Some talked of gray, bewhiskered hordeswho were advancing with relentless curses and chewing tobacco with unspeakablevalor; tremendous bodies of fierce soldiery who were sweeping along like theHuns. Others spoke of tattered and eternally hungry men who fired despondentpowders. “They’ll charge through hell’s fire an’brimstone t’ git a holt on a haversack, an’ sech stomachsain’t a’lastin’ long,” he was told. From the stories,the youth imagined the red, live bones sticking out through slits in the fadeduniforms.

Still, he could not put a whole faith in veteran’s tales, for recruitswere their prey. They talked much of smoke, fire, and blood, but he could nottell how much might be lies. They persistently yelled “Fresh fish!”at him, and were in no wise to be trusted.

However, he perceived now that it did not greatly matter what kind of soldiershe was going to fight, so long as they fought, which fact no one disputed.There was a more serious problem. He lay in his bunk pondering upon it. Hetried to mathematically prove to himself that he would not run from a battle.

Previously he had never felt obliged to wrestle too seriously with thisquestion. In his life he had taken certain things for granted, neverchallenging his belief in ultimate success, and bothering little about meansand roads. But here he was confronted with a thing of moment. It had suddenlyappeared to him that perhaps in a battle he might run. He was forced to admitthat as far as war was concerned he knew nothing of himself.

A sufficient time before he would have allowed the problem to kick its heels atthe outer portals of his mind, but now he felt compelled to give seriousattention to it.

A little panic-fear grew in his mind. As his imagination went forward to afight, he saw hideous possibilities. He contemplated the lurking menaces of thefuture, and failed in an effort to see himself standing stoutly in the midst ofthem. He recalled his visions of broken-bladed glory, but in the shadow of theimpending tumult he suspected them to be impossible pictures.

He sprang from the bunk and began to pace nervously to and fro. “GoodLord, what’s th’ matter with me?” he said aloud.

He felt that in this crisis his laws of life were useless. Whatever he hadlearned of himself was here of no avail. He was an unknown quantity. He sawthat he would again be obliged to experiment as he had in early youth. He mustaccumulate information of himself, and meanwhile he resolved to remain closeupon his guard lest those qualities of which he knew nothing shouldeverlastingly disgrace him. “Good Lord!” he repeated in dismay.

After a time the tall soldier slid dexterously through the hole. The loudprivate followed. They were wrangling.

“That’s all right,” said the tall soldier as he entered. Hewaved his hand expressively. “You can believe me or not, jest as youlike. All you got to do is sit down and wait as quiet as you can. Then prettysoon you’ll find out I was right.”

His comrade grunted stubbornly. For a moment he seemed to be searching for aformidable reply. Finally he said: “Well, you don’t know everythingin the world, do you?”

“Didn’t say I knew everything in the world,” retorted theother sharply. He began to stow various articles snugly into his knapsack.

The youth, pausing in his nervous walk, looked down at the busy figure.“Going to be a battle, sure, is there, Jim?” he asked.

“Of course there is,” replied the tall soldier. “Of coursethere is. You jest wait ’til to-morrow, and you’ll see one of thebiggest battles ever was. You jest wait.”

“Thunder!” said the youth.

“Oh, you’ll see fighting this time, my boy, what’ll beregular out-and-out fighting,” added the tall soldier, with the air of aman who is about to exhibit a battle for the benefit of his friends.

“Huh!” said the loud one from a corner.

“Well,” remarked the youth, “like as not this story’llturn out jest like them others did.”

“Not much it won’t,” replied the tall soldier, exasperated.“Not much it won’t. Didn’t the cavalry all start thismorning?” He glared about him. No one denied his statement. “Thecavalry started this morning,” he continued. “They say thereain’t hardly any cavalry left in camp. They’re going to Richmond,or some place, while we fight all the Johnnies. It’s some dodge likethat. The regiment’s got orders, too. A feller what seen ’em go toheadquarters told me a little while ago. And they’re raising blazes allover camp—anybody can see that.”

“Shucks!” said the loud one.

The youth remained silent for a time. At last he spoke to the tall soldier.“Jim!”

“What?”

“How do you think the reg’ment ’ll do?”

“Oh, they’ll fight all right, I guess, after they once get intoit,” said the other with cold judgment. He made a fine use of the thirdperson. “There’s been heaps of fun poked at ’em becausethey’re new, of course, and all that; but they’ll fight all right,I guess.”

“Think any of the boys ’ll run?” persisted the youth.

“Oh, there may be a few of ’em run, but there’s them kind inevery regiment, ’specially when they first goes under fire,” saidthe other in a tolerant way. “Of course it might happen that the hullkit-and-boodle might start and run, if some big fighting came first-off, andthen again they might stay and fight like fun. But you can’t bet onnothing. Of course they ain’t never been under fire yet, and itain’t likely they’ll lick the hull rebel army all-to-oncet thefirst time; but I think they’ll fight better than some, if worse thanothers. That’s the way I figger. They call the reg’ment‘Fresh fish’ and everything; but the boys come of good stock, andmost of ’em ’ll fight like sin after they oncet gitshootin’,” he added, with a mighty emphasis on the last four words.

“Oh, you think you know—” began the loud soldier with scorn.

The other turned savagely upon him. They had a rapid altercation, in which theyfastened upon each other various strange epithets.

The youth at last interrupted them. “Did you ever think you might runyourself, Jim?” he asked. On concluding the sentence he laughed as if hehad meant to aim a joke. The loud soldier also giggled.

The tall private waved his hand. “Well,” said he profoundly,“I’ve thought it might get too hot for Jim Conklin in some of themscrimmages, and if a whole lot of boys started and run, why, I s’poseI’d start and run. And if I once started to run, I’d run like thedevil, and no mistake. But if everybody was a-standing and a-fighting, why,I’d stand and fight. Be jiminey, I would. I’ll bet on it.”

“Huh!” said the loud one.

The youth of this tale felt gratitude for these words of his comrade. He hadfeared that all of the untried men possessed great and correct confidence. Henow was in a measure reassured.

Chapter II.

The next morning the youth discovered that his tall comrade had been thefast-flying messenger of a mistake. There was much scoffing at the latter bythose who had yesterday been firm adherents of his views, and there was even alittle sneering by men who had never believed the rumor. The tall one foughtwith a man from Chatfield Corners and beat him severely.

The youth felt, however, that his problem was in no wise lifted from him. Therewas, on the contrary, an irritating prolongation. The tale had created in him agreat concern for himself. Now, with the newborn question in his mind, he wascompelled to sink back into his old place as part of a blue demonstration.

For days he made ceaseless calculations, but they were all wondrouslyunsatisfactory. He found that he could establish nothing. He finally concludedthat the only way to prove himself was to go into the blaze, and thenfiguratively to watch his legs to discover their merits and faults. Hereluctantly admitted that he could not sit still and with a mental slate andpencil derive an answer. To gain it, he must have blaze, blood, and danger,even as a chemist requires this, that, and the other. So he fretted for anopportunity.

Meanwhile, he continually tried to measure himself by his comrades. The tallsoldier, for one, gave him some assurance. This man’s serene unconcerndealt him a measure of confidence, for he had known him since childhood, andfrom his intimate knowledge he did not see how he could be capable of anythingthat was beyond him, the youth. Still, he thought that his comrade might bemistaken about himself. Or, on the other hand, he might be a man heretoforedoomed to peace and obscurity, but, in reality, made to shine in war.

The youth would have liked to have discovered another who suspected himself. Asympathetic comparison of mental notes would have been a joy to him.

He occasionally tried to fathom a comrade with seductive sentences. He lookedabout to find men in the proper mood. All attempts failed to bring forth anystatement which looked in any way like a confession to those doubts which heprivately acknowledged in himself. He was afraid to make an open declaration ofhis concern, because he dreaded to place some unscrupulous confidant upon thehigh plane of the unconfessed from which elevation he could be derided.

In regard to his companions his mind wavered between two opinions, according tohis mood. Sometimes he inclined to believing them all heroes. In fact, heusually admired in secret the superior development of the higher qualities inothers. He could conceive of men going very insignificantly about the worldbearing a load of courage unseen, and although he had known many of hiscomrades through boyhood, he began to fear that his judgment of them had beenblind. Then, in other moments, he flouted these theories, and assured him thathis fellows were all privately wondering and quaking.

His emotions made him feel strange in the presence of men who talked excitedlyof a prospective battle as of a drama they were about to witness, with nothingbut eagerness and curiosity apparent in their faces. It was often that hesuspected them to be liars.

He did not pass such thoughts without severe condemnation of himself. He dinnedreproaches at times. He was convicted by himself of many shameful crimesagainst the gods of traditions.

In his great anxiety his heart was continually clamoring at what he consideredthe intolerable slowness of the generals. They seemed content to perchtranquilly on the river bank, and leave him bowed down by the weight of a greatproblem. He wanted it settled forthwith. He could not long bear such a load, hesaid. Sometimes his anger at the commanders reached an acute stage, and hegrumbled about the camp like a veteran.

One morning, however, he found himself in the ranks of his prepared regiment.The men were whispering speculations and recounting the old rumors. In thegloom before the break of the day their uniforms glowed a deep purple hue. Fromacross the river the red eyes were still peering. In the eastern sky there wasa yellow patch like a rug laid for the feet of the coming sun; and against it,black and patternlike, loomed the gigantic figure of the colonel on a gigantichorse.

From off in the darkness came the trampling of feet. The youth couldoccasionally see dark shadows that moved like monsters. The regiment stood atrest for what seemed a long time. The youth grew impatient. It was unendurablethe way these affairs were managed. He wondered how long they were to be keptwaiting.

As he looked all about him and pondered upon the mystic gloom, he began tobelieve that at any moment the ominous distance might be aflare, and therolling crashes of an engagement come to his ears. Staring once at the red eyesacross the river, he conceived them to be growing larger, as the orbs of a rowof dragons advancing. He turned toward the colonel and saw him lift hisgigantic arm and calmly stroke his mustache.

At last he heard from along the road at the foot of the hill the clatter of ahorse’s galloping hoofs. It must be the coming of orders. He bentforward, scarce breathing. The exciting clickety-click, as it grew louder andlouder, seemed to be beating upon his soul. Presently a horseman with janglingequipment drew rein before the colonel of the regiment. The two held a short,sharp-worded conversation. The men in the foremost ranks craned their necks.

As the horseman wheeled his animal and galloped away he turned to shout overhis shoulder, “Don’t forget that box of cigars!” The colonelmumbled in reply. The youth wondered what a box of cigars had to do with war.

A moment later the regiment went swinging off into the darkness. It was nowlike one of those moving monsters wending with many feet. The air was heavy,and cold with dew. A mass of wet grass, marched upon, rustled like silk.

There was an occasional flash and glimmer of steel from the backs of all thesehuge crawling reptiles. From the road came creakings and grumblings as somesurly guns were dragged away.

The men stumbled along still muttering speculations. There was a subdueddebate. Once a man fell down, and as he reached for his rifle a comrade,unseeing, trod upon his hand. He of the injured fingers swore bitterly, andaloud. A low, tittering laugh went among his fellows.

Presently they passed into a roadway and marched forward with easy strides. Adark regiment moved before them, and from behind also came the tinkle ofequipments on the bodies of marching men.

The rushing yellow of the developing day went on behind their backs. When thesunrays at last struck full and mellowingly upon the earth, the youth saw thatthe landscape was streaked with two long, thin, black columns which disappearedon the brow of a hill in front and rearward vanished in a wood. They were liketwo serpents crawling from the cavern of the night.

The river was not in view. The tall soldier burst into praises of what hethought to be his powers of perception.

Some of the tall one’s companions cried with emphasis that they, too, hadevolved the same thing, and they congratulated themselves upon it. But therewere others who said that the tall one’s plan was not the true one atall. They persisted with other theories. There was a vigorous discussion.

The youth took no part in them. As he walked along in careless line he wasengaged with his own eternal debate. He could not hinder himself from dwellingupon it. He was despondent and sullen, and threw shifting glances about him. Helooked ahead, often expecting to hear from the advance the rattle of firing.

But the long serpents crawled slowly from hill to hill without bluster ofsmoke. A dun-colored cloud of dust floated away to the right. The sky overheadwas of a fairy blue.

The youth studied the faces of his companions, ever on the watch to detectkindred emotions. He suffered disappointment. Some ardor of the air which wascausing the veteran commands to move with glee—almost with song—hadinfected the new regiment. The men began to speak of victory as of a thing theyknew. Also, the tall soldier received his vindication. They were certainlygoing to come around in behind the enemy. They expressed commiseration for thatpart of the army which had been left upon the river bank, felicitatingthemselves upon being a part of a blasting host.

The youth, considering himself as separated from the others, was saddened bythe blithe and merry speeches that went from rank to rank. The company wags allmade their best endeavors. The regiment tramped to the tune of laughter.

The blatant soldier often convulsed whole files by his biting sarcasms aimed atthe tall one.

And it was not long before all the men seemed to forget their mission. Wholebrigades grinned in unison, and regiments laughed.

A rather fat soldier attempted to pilfer a horse from a dooryard. He planned toload his knapsack upon it. He was escaping with his prize when a young girlrushed from the house and grabbed the animal’s mane. There followed awrangle. The young girl, with pink cheeks and shining eyes, stood like adauntless statue.

The observant regiment, standing at rest in the roadway, whooped at once, andentered whole-souled upon the side of the maiden. The men became so engrossedin this affair that they entirely ceased to remember their own large war. Theyjeered the piratical private, and called attention to various defects in hispersonal appearance; and they were wildly enthusiastic in support of the younggirl.

To her, from some distance, came bold advice. “Hit him with astick.”

There were crows and catcalls showered upon him when he retreated without thehorse. The regiment rejoiced at his downfall. Loud and vociferouscongratulations were showered upon the maiden, who stood panting and regardingthe troops with defiance.

At nightfall the column broke into regimental pieces, and the fragments wentinto the fields to camp. Tents sprang up like strange plants. Camp fires, likered, peculiar blossoms, dotted the night.

The youth kept from intercourse with his companions as much as circumstanceswould allow him. In the evening he wandered a few paces into the gloom. Fromthis little distance the many fires, with the black forms of men passing to andfro before the crimson rays, made weird and satanic effects.

He lay down in the grass. The blades pressed tenderly against his cheek. Themoon had been lighted and was hung in a treetop. The liquid stillness of thenight enveloping him made him feel vast pity for himself. There was a caress inthe soft winds; and the whole mood of the darkness, he thought, was one ofsympathy for himself in his distress.

He wished, without reserve, that he was at home again making the endless roundsfrom the house to the barn, from the barn to the fields, from the fields to thebarn, from the barn to the house. He remembered he had so often cursed thebrindle cow and her mates, and had sometimes flung milking stools. But, fromhis present point of view, there was a halo of happiness about each of theirheads, and he would have sacrificed all the brass buttons on the continent tohave been enabled to return to them. He told himself that he was not formed fora soldier. And he mused seriously upon the radical differences between himselfand those men who were dodging implike around the fires.

As he mused thus he heard the rustle of grass, and, upon turning his head,discovered the loud soldier. He called out, “Oh, Wilson!”

The latter approached and looked down. “Why, hello, Henry; is it you?What are you doing here?”

“Oh, thinking,” said the youth.

The other sat down and carefully lighted his pipe. “You’re gettingblue my boy. You’re looking thundering peek-ed. What the dickens is wrongwith you?”

“Oh, nothing,” said the youth.

The loud soldier launched then into the subject of the anticipated fight.“Oh, we’ve got ’em now!” As he spoke his boyish facewas wreathed in a gleeful smile, and his voice had an exultant ring.“We’ve got ’em now. At last, by the eternal thunders,we’ll lick ’em good!”

“If the truth was known,” he added, more soberly,“they’velicked usabout every clip up to now; butthis time—this time—we’ll lick ’em good!”

“I thought you was objecting to this march a little while ago,”said the youth coldly.

“Oh, it wasn’t that,” explained the other. “Idon’t mind marching, if there’s going to be fighting at the end ofit. What I hate is this getting moved here and moved there, with no good comingof it, as far as I can see, excepting sore feet and damned shortrations.”

“Well, Jim Conklin says we’ll get plenty of fighting thistime.”

“He’s right for once, I guess, though I can’t see how itcome. This time we’re in for a big battle, and we’ve got the bestend of it, certain sure. Gee rod! how we will thump ’em!”

He arose and began to pace to and fro excitedly. The thrill of his enthusiasmmade him walk with an elastic step. He was sprightly, vigorous, fiery in hisbelief in success. He looked into the future with clear proud eye, and he sworewith the air of an old soldier.

The youth watched him for a moment in silence. When he finally spoke his voicewas as bitter as dregs. “Oh, you’re going to do great things, Is’pose!”

The loud soldier blew a thoughtful cloud of smoke from his pipe. “Oh, Idon’t know,” he remarked with dignity; “I don’t know. Is’pose I’ll do as well as the rest. I’m going to try likethunder.” He evidently complimented himself upon the modesty of thisstatement.

“How do you know you won’t run when the time comes?” askedthe youth.

“Run?” said the loud one; “run?—of course not!”He laughed.

“Well,” continued the youth, “lots of good-a-’nough menhave thought they was going to do great things before the fight, but when thetime come they skedaddled.”

“Oh, that’s all true, I s’pose,” replied the other;“but I’m not going to skedaddle. The man that bets on my runningwill lose his money, that’s all.” He nodded confidently.

“Oh, shucks!” said the youth. “You ain’t the bravestman in the world, are you?”

“No, I ain’t,” exclaimed the loud soldier indignantly;“and I didn’t say I was the bravest man in the world, neither. Isaid I was going to do my share of fighting—that’s what I said. AndI am, too. Who are you, anyhow? You talk as if you thought you was NapoleonBonaparte.” He glared at the youth for a moment, and then strode away.

The youth called in a savage voice after his comrade: “Well, youneedn’t git mad about it!” But the other continued on his way andmade no reply.

He felt alone in space when his injured comrade had disappeared. His failure todiscover any mite of resemblance in their viewpoints made him more miserablethan before. No one seemed to be wrestling with such a terrific personalproblem. He was a mental outcast.

He went slowly to his tent and stretched himself on a blanket by the side ofthe snoring tall soldier. In the darkness he saw visions of a thousand-tonguedfear that would babble at his back and cause him to flee, while others weregoing coolly about their country’s business. He admitted that he wouldnot be able to cope with this monster. He felt that every nerve in his bodywould be an ear to hear the voices, while other men would remain stolid anddeaf.

And as he sweated with the pain of these thoughts, he could hear low, serenesentences. “I’ll bid five.” “Make it six.”“Seven.” “Seven goes.”

He stared at the red, shivering reflection of a fire on the white wall of histent until, exhausted and ill from the monotony of his suffering, he fellasleep.

Chapter III.

When another night came, the columns, changed to purple streaks, filed acrosstwo pontoon bridges. A glaring fire wine-tinted the waters of the river. Itsrays, shining upon the moving masses of troops, brought forth here and theresudden gleams of silver or gold. Upon the other shore a dark and mysteriousrange of hills was curved against the sky. The insect voices of the night sangsolemnly.

After this crossing the youth assured himself that at any moment they might besuddenly and fearfully assaulted from the caves of the lowering woods. He kepthis eyes watchfully upon the darkness.

But his regiment went unmolested to a camping place, and its soldiers slept thebrave sleep of wearied men. In the morning they were routed out with earlyenergy, and hustled along a narrow road that led deep into the forest.

It was during this rapid march that the regiment lost many of the marks of anew command.

The men had begun to count the miles upon their fingers, and they grew tired.“Sore feet an’ damned short rations, that’s all,” saidthe loud soldier. There was perspiration and grumblings. After a time theybegan to shed their knapsacks. Some tossed them unconcernedly down; others hidthem carefully, asserting their plans to return for them at some convenienttime. Men extricated themselves from thick shirts. Presently few carriedanything but their necessary clothing, blankets, haversacks, canteens, and armsand ammunition. “You can now eat and shoot,” said the tall soldierto the youth. “That’s all you want to do.”

There was sudden change from the ponderous infantry of theory to the light andspeedy infantry of practice. The regiment, relieved of a burden, received a newimpetus. But there was much loss of valuable knapsacks, and, on the whole, verygood shirts.

But the regiment was not yet veteranlike in appearance. Veteran regiments inthe army were likely to be very small aggregations of men. Once, when thecommand had first come to the field, some perambulating veterans, noting thelength of their column, had accosted them thus: “Hey, fellers, whatbrigade is that?” And when the men had replied that they formed aregiment and not a brigade, the older soldiers had laughed, and said, “OGawd!”

Also, there was too great a similarity in the hats. The hats of a regimentshould properly represent the history of headgear for a period of years. And,moreover, there were no letters of faded gold speaking from the colors. Theywere new and beautiful, and the color bearer habitually oiled the pole.

Presently the army again sat down to think. The odor of the peaceful pines wasin the men’s nostrils. The sound of monotonous axe blows rang through theforest, and the insects, nodding upon their perches, crooned like old women.The youth returned to his theory of a blue demonstration.

One gray dawn, however, he was kicked in the leg by the tall soldier, and then,before he was entirely awake, he found himself running down a wood road in themidst of men who were panting from the first effects of speed. His canteenbanged rythmically upon his thigh, and his haversack bobbed softly. His musketbounced a trifle from his shoulder at each stride and made his cap feeluncertain upon his head.

He could hear the men whisper jerky sentences: “Say—what’sall this—about?” “What th’thunder—we—skedaddlin’ this way fer?”“Billie—keep off m’ feet. Yeh run—like a cow.”And the loud soldier’s shrill voice could be heard: “What th’devil they in sich a hurry for?”

The youth thought the damp fog of early morning moved from the rush of a greatbody of troops. From the distance came a sudden spatter of firing.

He was bewildered. As he ran with his comrades he strenuously tried to think,but all he knew was that if he fell down those coming behind would tread uponhim. All his faculties seemed to be needed to guide him over and pastobstructions. He felt carried along by a mob.

The sun spread disclosing rays, and, one by one, regiments burst into view likearmed men just born of the earth. The youth perceived that the time had come.He was about to be measured. For a moment he felt in the face of his greattrial like a babe, and the flesh over his heart seemed very thin. He seizedtime to look about him calculatingly.

But he instantly saw that it would be impossible for him to escape from theregiment. It inclosed him. And there were iron laws of tradition and law onfour sides. He was in a moving box.

As he perceived this fact it occurred to him that he had never wished to cometo the war. He had not enlisted of his free will. He had been dragged by themerciless government. And now they were taking him out to be slaughtered.

The regiment slid down a bank and wallowed across a little stream. The mournfulcurrent moved slowly on, and from the water, shaded black, some white bubbleeyes looked at the men.

As they climbed the hill on the farther side artillery began to boom. Here theyouth forgot many things as he felt a sudden impulse of curiosity. He scrambledup the bank with a speed that could not be exceeded by a bloodthirsty man.

He expected a battle scene.

There were some little fields girted and squeezed by a forest. Spread over thegrass and in among the tree trunks, he could see knots and waving lines ofskirmishers who were running hither and thither and firing at the landscape. Adark battle line lay upon a sunstruck clearing that gleamed orange color. Aflag fluttered.

Other regiments floundered up the bank. The brigade was formed in line ofbattle, and after a pause started slowly through the woods in the rear of thereceding skirmishers, who were continually melting into the scene to appearagain farther on. They were always busy as bees, deeply absorbed in theirlittle combats.

The youth tried to observe everything. He did not use care to avoid trees andbranches, and his forgotten feet were constantly knocking against stones orgetting entangled in briers. He was aware that these battalions with theircommotions were woven red and startling into the gentle fabric of softenedgreens and browns. It looked to be a wrong place for a battle field.

The skirmishers in advance fascinated him. Their shots into thickets and atdistant and prominent trees spoke to him of tragedies—hidden, mysterious,solemn.

Once the line encountered the body of a dead soldier. He lay upon his backstaring at the sky. He was dressed in an awkward suit of yellowish brown. Theyouth could see that the soles of his shoes had been worn to the thinness ofwriting paper, and from a great rent in one the dead foot projected piteously.And it was as if fate had betrayed the soldier. In death it exposed to hisenemies that poverty which in life he had perhaps concealed from his friends.

The ranks opened covertly to avoid the corpse. The invulnerable dead man forceda way for himself. The youth looked keenly at the ashen face. The wind raisedthe tawny beard. It moved as if a hand were stroking it. He vaguely desired towalk around and around the body and stare; the impulse of the living to try toread in dead eyes the answer to the Question.

During the march the ardor which the youth had acquired when out of view of thefield rapidly faded to nothing. His curiosity was quite easily satisfied. If anintense scene had caught him with its wild swing as he came to the top of thebank, he might have gone roaring on. This advance upon Nature was too calm. Hehad opportunity to reflect. He had time in which to wonder about himself and toattempt to probe his sensations.

Absurd ideas took hold upon him. He thought that he did not relish thelandscape. It threatened him. A coldness swept over his back, and it is truethat his trousers felt to him that they were no fit for his legs at all.

A house standing placidly in distant fields had to him an ominous look. Theshadows of the woods were formidable. He was certain that in this vista therelurked fierce-eyed hosts. The swift thought came to him that the generals didnot know what they were about. It was all a trap. Suddenly those close forestswould bristle with rifle barrels. Ironlike brigades would appear in the rear.They were all going to be sacrificed. The generals were stupids. The enemywould presently swallow the whole command. He glared about him, expecting tosee the stealthy approach of his death.

He thought that he must break from the ranks and harangue his comrades. Theymust not all be killed like pigs; and he was sure it would come to pass unlessthey were informed of these dangers. The generals were idiots to send themmarching into a regular pen. There was but one pair of eyes in the corps. Hewould step forth and make a speech. Shrill and passionate words came to hislips.

The line, broken into moving fragments by the ground, went calmly on throughfields and woods. The youth looked at the men nearest him, and saw, for themost part, expressions of deep interest, as if they were investigatingsomething that had fascinated them. One or two stepped with overvaliant airs asif they were already plunged into war. Others walked as upon thin ice. Thegreater part of the untested men appeared quiet and absorbed. They were goingto look at war, the red animal—war, the blood-swollen god. And they weredeeply engrossed in this march.

As he looked the youth gripped his outcry at his throat. He saw that even ifthe men were tottering with fear they would laugh at his warning. They wouldjeer him, and, if practicable, pelt him with missiles. Admitting that he mightbe wrong, a frenzied declamation of the kind would turn him into a worm.

He assumed, then, the demeanor of one who knows that he is doomed alone tounwritten responsibilities. He lagged, with tragic glances at the sky.

He was surprised presently by the young lieutenant of his company, who beganheartily to beat him with a sword, calling out in a loud and insolent voice:“Come, young man, get up into ranks there. No skulking ’ll dohere.” He mended his pace with suitable haste. And he hated thelieutenant, who had no appreciation of fine minds. He was a mere brute.

After a time the brigade was halted in the cathedral light of a forest. Thebusy skirmishers were still popping. Through the aisles of the wood could beseen the floating smoke from their rifles. Sometimes it went up in littleballs, white and compact.

During this halt many men in the regiment began erecting tiny hills in front ofthem. They used stones, sticks, earth, and anything they thought might turn abullet. Some built comparatively large ones, while others seemed content withlittle ones.

This procedure caused a discussion among the men. Some wished to fight likeduelists, believing it to be correct to stand erect and be, from their feet totheir foreheads, a mark. They said they scorned the devices of the cautious.But the others scoffed in reply, and pointed to the veterans on the flanks whowere digging at the ground like terriers. In a short time there was quite abarricade along the regimental fronts. Directly, however, they were ordered towithdraw from that place.

This astounded the youth. He forgot his stewing over the advance movement.“Well, then, what did they march us out here for?” he demanded ofthe tall soldier. The latter with calm faith began a heavy explanation,although he had been compelled to leave a little protection of stones and dirtto which he had devoted much care and skill.

When the regiment was aligned in another position each man’s regard forhis safety caused another line of small intrenchments. They ate their noon mealbehind a third one. They were moved from this one also. They were marched fromplace to place with apparent aimlessness.

The youth had been taught that a man became another thing in battle. He saw hissalvation in such a change. Hence this waiting was an ordeal to him. He was ina fever of impatience. He considered that there was denoted a lack of purposeon the part of the generals. He began to complain to the tall soldier. “Ican’t stand this much longer,” he cried. “I don’t seewhat good it does to make us wear out our legs for nothin’.” Hewished to return to camp, knowing that this affair was a blue demonstration; orelse to go into a battle and discover that he had been a fool in his doubts,and was, in truth, a man of traditional courage. The strain of presentcircumstances he felt to be intolerable.

The philosophical tall soldier measured a sandwich of cracker and pork andswallowed it in a nonchalant manner. “Oh, I suppose we must goreconnoitering around the country jest to keep ’em from getting tooclose, or to develop ’em, or something.”

“Huh!” said the loud soldier.

“Well,” cried the youth, still fidgeting, “I’d ratherdo anything ’most than go tramping ’round the country all day doingno good to nobody and jest tiring ourselves out.”

“So would I,” said the loud soldier. “It ain’t right. Itell you if anybody with any sense was a-runnin’ this armyit—”

“Oh, shut up!” roared the tall private. “You little fool. Youlittle damn’ cuss. You ain’t had that there coat and them pants onfor six months, and yet you talk as if—”

“Well, I wanta do some fighting anyway,” interrupted the other.“I didn’t come here to walk. I could ’ave walked tohome—’round an’ ’round the barn, if I jest wanted towalk.”

The tall one, red-faced, swallowed another sandwich as if taking poison indespair.

But gradually, as he chewed, his face became again quiet and contented. Hecould not rage in fierce argument in the presence of such sandwiches. Duringhis meals he always wore an air of blissful contemplation of the food he hadswallowed. His spirit seemed then to be communing with the viands.

He accepted new environment and circumstance with great coolness, eating fromhis haversack at every opportunity. On the march he went along with the strideof a hunter, objecting to neither gait nor distance. And he had not raised hisvoice when he had been ordered away from three little protective piles of earthand stone, each of which had been an engineering feat worthy of being madesacred to the name of his grandmother.

In the afternoon, the regiment went out over the same ground it had taken inthe morning. The landscape then ceased to threaten the youth. He had been closeto it and become familiar with it.

When, however, they began to pass into a new region, his old fears of stupidityand incompetence reassailed him, but this time he doggedly let them babble. Hewas occupied with his problem, and in his desperation he concluded that thestupidity did not greatly matter.

Once he thought he had concluded that it would be better to get killed directlyand end his troubles. Regarding death thus out of the corner of his eye, heconceived it to be nothing but rest, and he was filled with a momentaryastonishment that he should have made an extraordinary commotion over the merematter of getting killed. He would die; he would go to some place where hewould be understood. It was useless to expect appreciation of his profound andfine sense from such men as the lieutenant. He must look to the grave forcomprehension.

The skirmish fire increased to a long clattering sound. With it was mingledfar-away cheering. A battery spoke.

Directly the youth could see the skirmishers running. They were pursued by thesound of musketry fire. After a time the hot, dangerous flashes of the rifleswere visible. Smoke clouds went slowly and insolently across the fields likeobservant phantoms. The din became crescendo, like the roar of an oncomingtrain.

A brigade ahead of them and on the right went into action with a rending roar.It was as if it had exploded. And thereafter it lay stretched in the distancebehind a long gray wall, that one was obliged to look twice at to make surethat it was smoke.

The youth, forgetting his neat plan of getting killed, gazed spell bound. Hiseyes grew wide and busy with the action of the scene. His mouth was a littleways open.

Of a sudden he felt a heavy and sad hand laid upon his shoulder. Awakening fromhis trance of observation he turned and beheld the loud soldier.

“It’s my first and last battle, old boy,” said the latter,with intense gloom. He was quite pale and his girlish lip was trembling.

“Eh?” murmured the youth in great astonishment.

“It’s my first and last battle, old boy,” continued the loudsoldier. “Something tells me—”

“What?”

“I’m a gone coon this first time and—and I w-want you to takethese here things—to—my—folks.” He ended in a quaveringsob of pity for himself. He handed the youth a little packet done up in ayellow envelope.

“Why, what the devil—” began the youth again.

But the other gave him a glance as from the depths of a tomb, and raised hislimp hand in a prophetic manner and turned away.

Chapter IV.

The brigade was halted in the fringe of a grove. The men crouched among thetrees and pointed their restless guns out at the fields. They tried to lookbeyond the smoke.

Out of this haze they could see running men. Some shouted information andgestured as they hurried.

The men of the new regiment watched and listened eagerly, while their tonguesran on in gossip of the battle. They mouthed rumors that had flown like birdsout of the unknown.

“They say Perry has been driven in with big loss.”

“Yes, Carrott went t’ th’ hospital. He said he was sick. Thatsmart lieutenant is commanding ‘G’ Company. Th’ boys say theywon’t be under Carrott no more if they all have t’ desert. Theyallus knew he was a—”

“Hannises’ batt’ry is took.”

“It ain’t either. I saw Hannises’ batt’ry off onth’ left not more’n fifteen minutes ago.”

“Well—”

“Th’ general, he ses he is goin’ t’ take th’ hullcommand of th’ 304th when we go inteh action, an’ then he seswe’ll do sech fightin’ as never another one reg’mentdone.”

“They say we’re catchin’ it over on th’ left. They sayth’ enemy driv’ our line inteh a devil of a swamp an’ tookHannises’ batt’ry.”

“No sech thing. Hannises’ batt’ry was ’long here’bout a minute ago.”

“That young Hasbrouck, he makes a good off’cer. He ain’tafraid ’a nothin’.”

“I met one of th’ 148th Maine boys an’ he ses his brigade fitth’ hull rebel army fer four hours over on th’ turnpike roadan’ killed about five thousand of ’em. He ses one more sech fightas that an’ th’ war ’ll be over.”

“Bill wasn’t scared either. No, sir! It wasn’t that. Billain’t a-gittin’ scared easy. He was jest mad, that’s what hewas. When that feller trod on his hand, he up an’ sed that he waswillin’ t’ give his hand t’ his country, but he be dumbed ifhe was goin’ t’ have every dumb bushwhacker in th’ kentrywalkin’ ’round on it. So he went t’ th’ hospitaldisregardless of th’ fight. Three fingers was crunched. Th’ derndoctor wanted t’ amputate ’m, an’ Bill, he raised a heluvarow, I hear. He’s a funny feller.”

The din in front swelled to a tremendous chorus. The youth and his fellows werefrozen to silence. They could see a flag that tossed in the smoke angrily. Nearit were the blurred and agitated forms of troops. There came a turbulent streamof men across the fields. A battery changing position at a frantic gallopscattered the stragglers right and left.

A shell screaming like a storm banshee went over the huddled heads of thereserves. It landed in the grove, and exploding redly flung the brown earth.There was a little shower of pine needles.

Bullets began to whistle among the branches and nip at the trees. Twigs andleaves came sailing down. It was as if a thousand axes, wee and invisible, werebeing wielded. Many of the men were constantly dodging and ducking their heads.

The lieutenant of the youth’s company was shot in the hand. He began toswear so wondrously that a nervous laugh went along the regimental line. Theofficer’s profanity sounded conventional. It relieved the tightenedsenses of the new men. It was as if he had hit his fingers with a tack hammerat home.

He held the wounded member carefully away from his side so that the blood wouldnot drip upon his trousers.

The captain of the company, tucking his sword under his arm, produced ahandkerchief and began to bind with it the lieutenant’s wound. And theydisputed as to how the binding should be done.

The battle flag in the distance jerked about madly. It seemed to be strugglingto free itself from an agony. The billowing smoke was filled with horizontalflashes.

Men rushing swiftly emerged from it. They grew in numbers until it was seenthat the whole command was fleeing. The flag suddenly sank down as if dying.Its motion as it fell was a gesture of despair.

Wild yells came from behind the walls of smoke. A sketch in gray and reddissolved into a moblike body of men who galloped like wild horses. The veteranregiments on the right and left of the 304th immediately began to jeer. Withthe passionate song of the bullets and the banshee shrieks of shells weremingled loud catcalls and bits of facetious advice concerning places of safety.

But the new regiment was breathless with horror. “Gawd! Saunders’sgot crushed!” whispered the man at the youth’s elbow. They shrankback and crouched as if compelled to await a flood.

The youth shot a swift glance along the blue ranks of the regiment. Theprofiles were motionless, carven; and afterward he remembered that the colorsergeant was standing with his legs apart, as if he expected to be pushed tothe ground.

The following throng went whirling around the flank. Here and there wereofficers carried along on the stream like exasperated chips. They were strikingabout them with their swords and with their left fists, punching every headthey could reach. They cursed like highwaymen.

A mounted officer displayed the furious anger of a spoiled child. He raged withhis head, his arms, and his legs.

Another, the commander of the brigade, was galloping about bawling. His hat wasgone and his clothes were awry. He resembled a man who has come from bed to goto a fire. The hoofs of his horse often threatened the heads of the runningmen, but they scampered with singular fortune. In this rush they wereapparently all deaf and blind. They heeded not the largest and longest of theoaths that were thrown at them from all directions.

Frequently over this tumult could be heard the grim jokes of the criticalveterans; but the retreating men apparently were not even conscious of thepresence of an audience.

The battle reflection that shone for an instant in the faces on the mad currentmade the youth feel that forceful hands from heaven would not have been able tohave held him in place if he could have got intelligent control of his legs.

There was an appalling imprint upon these faces. The struggle in the smoke hadpictured an exaggeration of itself on the bleached cheeks and in the eyes wildwith one desire.

The sight of this stampede exerted a floodlike force that seemed able to dragsticks and stones and men from the ground. They of the reserves had to hold on.They grew pale and firm, and red and quaking.

The youth achieved one little thought in the midst of this chaos. The compositemonster which had caused the other troops to flee had not then appeared. Heresolved to get a view of it, and then, he thought he might very likely runbetter than the best of them.

Chapter V.

There were moments of waiting. The youth thought of the village street at homebefore the arrival of the circus parade on a day in the spring. He rememberedhow he had stood, a small, thrillful boy, prepared to follow the dingy ladyupon the white horse, or the band in its faded chariot. He saw the yellow road,the lines of expectant people, and the sober houses. He particularly rememberedan old fellow who used to sit upon a cracker box in front of the store andfeign to despise such exhibitions. A thousand details of color and form surgedin his mind. The old fellow upon the cracker box appeared in middle prominence.

Some one cried, “Here they come!”

There was rustling and muttering among the men. They displayed a feverishdesire to have every possible cartridge ready to their hands. The boxes werepulled around into various positions, and adjusted with great care. It was asif seven hundred new bonnets were being tried on.

The tall soldier, having prepared his rifle, produced a red handkerchief ofsome kind. He was engaged in knotting it about his throat with exquisiteattention to its position, when the cry was repeated up and down the line in amuffled roar of sound.

“Here they come! Here they come!” Gun locks clicked.

Across the smoke-infested fields came a brown swarm of running men who weregiving shrill yells. They came on, stooping and swinging their rifles at allangles. A flag, tilted forward, sped near the front.

As he caught sight of them the youth was momentarily startled by a thought thatperhaps his gun was not loaded. He stood trying to rally his falteringintellect so that he might recollect the moment when he had loaded, but hecould not.

A hatless general pulled his dripping horse to a stand near the colonel of the304th. He shook his fist in the other’s face. “You’ve got tohold ’em back!” he shouted, savagely; “you’ve got tohold ’em back!”

In his agitation the colonel began to stammer. “A-all r-right, General,all right, by Gawd! We-we’ll do our—we-we’ll d-d-do-do ourbest, General.” The general made a passionate gesture and galloped away.The colonel, perchance to relieve his feelings, began to scold like a wetparrot. The youth, turning swiftly to make sure that the rear was unmolested,saw the commander regarding his men in a highly resentful manner, as if heregretted above everything his association with them.

The man at the youth’s elbow was mumbling, as if to himself: “Oh,we’re in for it now! oh, we’re in for it now!”

The captain of the company had been pacing excitedly to and fro in the rear. Hecoaxed in schoolmistress fashion, as to a congregation of boys with primers.His talk was an endless repetition. “Reserve your fire,boys—don’t shoot till I tell you—save your fire—waittill they get close up—don’t be damned fools—”

Perspiration streamed down the youth’s face, which was soiled like thatof a weeping urchin. He frequently, with a nervous movement, wiped his eyeswith his coat sleeve. His mouth was still a little ways open.

He got the one glance at the foe-swarming field in front of him, and instantlyceased to debate the question of his piece being loaded. Before he was ready tobegin—before he had announced to himself that he was about tofight—he threw the obedient well-balanced rifle into position and fired afirst wild shot. Directly he was working at his weapon like an automaticaffair.

He suddenly lost concern for himself, and forgot to look at a menacing fate. Hebecame not a man but a member. He felt that something of which he was apart—a regiment, an army, a cause, or a country—was in crisis. Hewas welded into a common personality which was dominated by a single desire.For some moments he could not flee no more than a little finger can commit arevolution from a hand.

If he had thought the regiment was about to be annihilated perhaps he couldhave amputated himself from it. But its noise gave him assurance. The regimentwas like a firework that, once ignited, proceeds superior to circumstancesuntil its blazing vitality fades. It wheezed and banged with a mighty power. Hepictured the ground before it as strewn with the discomfited.

There was a consciousness always of the presence of his comrades about him. Hefelt the subtle battle brotherhood more potent even than the cause for whichthey were fighting. It was a mysterious fraternity born of the smoke and dangerof death.

He was at a task. He was like a carpenter who has made many boxes, making stillanother box, only there was furious haste in his movements. He, in histhoughts, was careering off in other places, even as the carpenter who as heworks whistles and thinks of his friend or his enemy, his home or a saloon. Andthese jolted dreams were never perfect to him afterward, but remained a mass ofblurred shapes.

Presently he began to feel the effects of the war atmosphere—a blisteringsweat, a sensation that his eyeballs were about to crack like hot stones. Aburning roar filled his ears.

Following this came a red rage. He developed the acute exasperation of apestered animal, a well-meaning cow worried by dogs. He had a mad feelingagainst his rifle, which could only be used against one life at a time. Hewished to rush forward and strangle with his fingers. He craved a power thatwould enable him to make a world-sweeping gesture and brush all back. Hisimpotency appeared to him, and made his rage into that of a driven beast.

Buried in the smoke of many rifles his anger was directed not so much againstthe men whom he knew were rushing toward him as against the swirling battlephantoms which were choking him, stuffing their smoke robes down his parchedthroat. He fought frantically for respite for his senses, for air, as a babebeing smothered attacks the deadly blankets.

There was a blare of heated rage mingled with a certain expression ofintentness on all faces. Many of the men were making low-toned noises withtheir mouths, and these subdued cheers, snarls, imprecations, prayers, made awild, barbaric song that went as an undercurrent of sound, strange andchantlike with the resounding chords of the war march. The man at theyouth’s elbow was babbling. In it there was something soft and tenderlike the monologue of a babe. The tall soldier was swearing in a loud voice.From his lips came a black procession of curious oaths. Of a sudden anotherbroke out in a querulous way like a man who has mislaid his hat. “Well,why don’t they support us? Why don’t they send supports? Do theythink—”

The youth in his battle sleep heard this as one who dozes hears.

There was a singular absence of heroic poses. The men bending and surging intheir haste and rage were in every impossible attitude. The steel ramrodsclanked and clanged with incessant din as the men pounded them furiously intothe hot rifle barrels. The flaps of the cartridge boxes were all unfastened,and bobbed idiotically with each movement. The rifles, once loaded, were jerkedto the shoulder and fired without apparent aim into the smoke or at one of theblurred and shifting forms which upon the field before the regiment had beengrowing larger and larger like puppets under a magician’s hand.

The officers, at their intervals, rearward, neglected to stand in picturesqueattitudes. They were bobbing to and fro roaring directions and encouragements.The dimensions of their howls were extraordinary. They expended their lungswith prodigal wills. And often they nearly stood upon their heads in theiranxiety to observe the enemy on the other side of the tumbling smoke.

The lieutenant of the youth’s company had encountered a soldier who hadfled screaming at the first volley of his comrades. Behind the lines these twowere acting a little isolated scene. The man was blubbering and staring withsheeplike eyes at the lieutenant, who had seized him by the collar and waspommeling him. He drove him back into the ranks with many blows. The soldierwent mechanically, dully, with his animal-like eyes upon the officer. Perhapsthere was to him a divinity expressed in the voice of the other—stern,hard, with no reflection of fear in it. He tried to reload his gun, but hisshaking hands prevented. The lieutenant was obliged to assist him.

The men dropped here and there like bundles. The captain of the youth’scompany had been killed in an early part of the action. His body lay stretchedout in the position of a tired man resting, but upon his face there was anastonished and sorrowful look, as if he thought some friend had done him an illturn. The babbling man was grazed by a shot that made the blood stream widelydown his face. He clapped both hands to his head. “Oh!” he said,and ran. Another grunted suddenly as if he had been struck by a club in thestomach. He sat down and gazed ruefully. In his eyes there was mute, indefinitereproach. Farther up the line a man, standing behind a tree, had had his kneejoint splintered by a ball. Immediately he had dropped his rifle and grippedthe tree with both arms. And there he remained, clinging desperately and cryingfor assistance that he might withdraw his hold upon the tree.

At last an exultant yell went along the quivering line. The firing dwindledfrom an uproar to a last vindictive popping. As the smoke slowly eddied away,the youth saw that the charge had been repulsed. The enemy were scattered intoreluctant groups. He saw a man climb to the top of the fence, straddle therail, and fire a parting shot. The waves had receded, leaving bits of darkdébrisupon the ground.

Some in the regiment began to whoop frenziedly. Many were silent. Apparentlythey were trying to contemplate themselves.

After the fever had left his veins, the youth thought that at last he was goingto suffocate. He became aware of the foul atmosphere in which he had beenstruggling. He was grimy and dripping like a laborer in a foundry. He graspedhis canteen and took a long swallow of the warmed water.

A sentence with variations went up and down the line. “Well, we’vehelt ’em back. We’ve helt ’em back; derned if wehaven’t.” The men said it blissfully, leering at each other withdirty smiles.

The youth turned to look behind him and off to the right and off to the left.He experienced the joy of a man who at last finds leisure in which to lookabout him.

Under foot there were a few ghastly forms motionless. They lay twisted infantastic contortions. Arms were bent and heads were turned in incredible ways.It seemed that the dead men must have fallen from some great height to get intosuch positions. They looked to be dumped out upon the ground from the sky.

From a position in the rear of the grove a battery was throwing shells over it.The flash of the guns startled the youth at first. He thought they were aimeddirectly at him. Through the trees he watched the black figures of the gunnersas they worked swiftly and intently. Their labor seemed a complicated thing. Hewondered how they could remember its formula in the midst of confusion.

The guns squatted in a row like savage chiefs. They argued with abruptviolence. It was a grim pow-wow. Their busy servants ran hither and thither.

A small procession of wounded men were going drearily toward the rear. It was aflow of blood from the torn body of the brigade.

To the right and to the left were the dark lines of other troops. Far in fronthe thought he could see lighter masses protruding in points from the forest.They were suggestive of unnumbered thousands.

Once he saw a tiny battery go dashing along the line of the horizon. The tinyriders were beating the tiny horses.

From a sloping hill came the sound of cheerings and clashes. Smoke welledslowly through the leaves.

Batteries were speaking with thunderous oratorical effort. Here and there wereflags, the red in the stripes dominating. They splashed bits of warm color uponthe dark lines of troops.

The youth felt the old thrill at the sight of the emblems. They were likebeautiful birds strangely undaunted in a storm.

As he listened to the din from the hillside, to a deep pulsating thunder thatcame from afar to the left, and to the lesser clamors which came from manydirections, it occurred to him that they were fighting, too, over there, andover there, and over there. Heretofore he had supposed that all the battle wasdirectly under his nose.

As he gazed around him the youth felt a flash of astonishment at the blue, puresky and the sun gleamings on the trees and fields. It was surprising thatNature had gone tranquilly on with her golden process in the midst of so muchdevilment.

Chapter VI.

The youth awakened slowly. He came gradually back to a position from which hecould regard himself. For moments he had been scrutinizing his person in adazed way as if he had never before seen himself. Then he picked up his capfrom the ground. He wriggled in his jacket to make a more comfortable fit, andkneeling relaced his shoe. He thoughtfully mopped his reeking features.

So it was all over at last! The supreme trial had been passed. The red,formidable difficulties of war had been vanquished.

He went into an ecstasy of self-satisfaction. He had the most delightfulsensations of his life. Standing as if apart from himself, he viewed that lastscene. He perceived that the man who had fought thus was magnificent.

He felt that he was a fine fellow. He saw himself even with those ideals whichhe had considered as far beyond him. He smiled in deep gratification.

Upon his fellows he beamed tenderness and good will. “Gee! ain’t ithot, hey?” he said affably to a man who was polishing his streaming facewith his coat sleeves.

“You bet!” said the other, grinning sociably. “I never seensech dumb hotness.” He sprawled out luxuriously on the ground.“Gee, yes! An’ I hope we don’t have no more fightin’till a week from Monday.”

There were some handshakings and deep speeches with men whose features werefamiliar, but with whom the youth now felt the bonds of tied hearts. He helpeda cursing comrade to bind up a wound of the shin.

But, of a sudden, cries of amazement broke out along the ranks of the newregiment. “Here they come ag’in! Here they come ag’in!”The man who had sprawled upon the ground started up and said,“Gosh!”

The youth turned quick eyes upon the field. He discerned forms begin to swellin masses out of a distant wood. He again saw the tilted flag speeding forward.

The shells, which had ceased to trouble the regiment for a time, came swirlingagain, and exploded in the grass or among the leaves of the trees. They lookedto be strange war flowers bursting into fierce bloom.

The men groaned. The luster faded from their eyes. Their smudged countenancesnow expressed a profound dejection. They moved their stiffened bodies slowly,and watched in sullen mood the frantic approach of the enemy. The slavestoiling in the temple of this god began to feel rebellion at his harsh tasks.

They fretted and complained each to each. “Oh, say, this is too much of agood thing! Why can’t somebody send us supports?”

“We ain’t never goin’ to stand this second banging. Ididn’t come here to fight the hull damn’ rebel army.”

There was one who raised a doleful cry. “I wish Bill Smithers had trod onmy hand, insteader me treddin’ on his’n.” The sore joints ofthe regiment creaked as it painfully floundered into position to repulse.

The youth stared. Surely, he thought, this impossible thing was not about tohappen. He waited as if he expected the enemy to suddenly stop, apologize, andretire bowing. It was all a mistake.

But the firing began somewhere on the regimental line and ripped along in bothdirections. The level sheets of flame developed great clouds of smoke thattumbled and tossed in the mild wind near the ground for a moment, and thenrolled through the ranks as through a gate. The clouds were tinged an earthlikeyellow in the sunrays and in the shadow were a sorry blue. The flag wassometimes eaten and lost in this mass of vapor, but more often it projected,sun-touched, resplendent.

Into the youth’s eyes there came a look that one can see in the orbs of ajaded horse. His neck was quivering with nervous weakness and the muscles ofhis arms felt numb and bloodless. His hands, too, seemed large and awkward asif he was wearing invisible mittens. And there was a great uncertainty abouthis knee joints.

The words that comrades had uttered previous to the firing began to recur tohim. “Oh, say, this is too much of a good thing! What do they take usfor—why don’t they send supports? I didn’t come here to fightthe hull damned rebel army.”

He began to exaggerate the endurance, the skill, and the valor of those whowere coming. Himself reeling from exhaustion, he was astonished beyond measureat such persistency. They must be machines of steel. It was very gloomystruggling against such affairs, wound up perhaps to fight until sundown.

He slowly lifted his rifle and catching a glimpse of the thickspread field heblazed at a cantering cluster. He stopped then and began to peer as best as hecould through the smoke. He caught changing views of the ground covered withmen who were all running like pursued imps, and yelling.

To the youth it was an onslaught of redoubtable dragons. He became like the manwho lost his legs at the approach of the red and green monster. He waited in asort of a horrified, listening attitude. He seemed to shut his eyes and wait tobe gobbled.

A man near him who up to this time had been working feverishly at his riflesuddenly stopped and ran with howls. A lad whose face had borne an expressionof exalted courage, the majesty of he who dares give his life, was, at aninstant, smitten abject. He blanched like one who has come to the edge of acliff at midnight and is suddenly made aware. There was a revelation. He, too,threw down his gun and fled. There was no shame in his face. He ran like arabbit.

Others began to scamper away through the smoke. The youth turned his head,shaken from his trance by this movement as if the regiment was leaving himbehind. He saw the few fleeting forms.

He yelled then with fright and swung about. For a moment, in the great clamor,he was like a proverbial chicken. He lost the direction of safety. Destructionthreatened him from all points.

Directly he began to speed toward the rear in great leaps. His rifle and capwere gone. His unbuttoned coat bulged in the wind. The flap of his cartridgebox bobbed wildly, and his canteen, by its slender cord, swung out behind. Onhis face was all the horror of those things which he imagined.

The lieutenant sprang forward bawling. The youth saw his features wrathfullyred, and saw him make a dab with his sword. His one thought of the incident wasthat the lieutenant was a peculiar creature to feel interested in such mattersupon this occasion.

He ran like a blind man. Two or three times he fell down. Once he knocked hisshoulder so heavily against a tree that he went headlong.

Since he had turned his back upon the fight his fears had been wondrouslymagnified. Death about to thrust him between the shoulder blades was far moredreadful than death about to smite him between the eyes. When he thought of itlater, he conceived the impression that it is better to view the appalling thanto be merely within hearing. The noises of the battle were like stones; hebelieved himself liable to be crushed.

As he ran on he mingled with others. He dimly saw men on his right and on hisleft, and he heard footsteps behind him. He thought that all the regiment wasfleeing, pursued by those ominous crashes.

In his flight the sound of these following footsteps gave him his one meagerrelief. He felt vaguely that death must make a first choice of the men who werenearest; the initial morsels for the dragons would be then those who werefollowing him. So he displayed the zeal of an insane sprinter in his purpose tokeep them in the rear. There was a race.

As he, leading, went across a little field, he found himself in a region ofshells. They hurtled over his head with long wild screams. As he listened heimagined them to have rows of cruel teeth that grinned at him. Once one litbefore him and the livid lightning of the explosion effectually barred the wayin his chosen direction. He groveled on the ground and then springing up wentcareering off through some bushes.

He experienced a thrill of amazement when he came within view of a battery inaction. The men there seemed to be in conventional moods, altogether unaware ofthe impending annihilation. The battery was disputing with a distant antagonistand the gunners were wrapped in admiration of their shooting. They werecontinually bending in coaxing postures over the guns. They seemed to bepatting them on the back and encouraging them with words. The guns, stolid andundaunted, spoke with dogged valor.

The precise gunners were coolly enthusiastic. They lifted their eyes everychance to the smoke-wreathed hillock from whence the hostile battery addressedthem. The youth pitied them as he ran. Methodical idiots! Machine-like fools!The refined joy of planting shells in the midst of the other battery’sformation would appear a little thing when the infantry came swooping out ofthe woods.

The face of a youthful rider, who was jerking his frantic horse with an abandonof temper he might display in a placid barnyard, was impressed deeply upon hismind. He knew that he looked upon a man who would presently be dead.

Too, he felt a pity for the guns, standing, six good comrades, in a bold row.

He saw a brigade going to the relief of its pestered fellows. He scrambled upona wee hill and watched it sweeping finely, keeping formation in difficultplaces. The blue of the line was crusted with steel color, and the brilliantflags projected. Officers were shouting.

This sight also filled him with wonder. The brigade was hurrying briskly to begulped into the infernal mouths of the war god. What manner of men were they,anyhow? Ah, it was some wondrous breed! Or else they didn’tcomprehend—the fools.

A furious order caused commotion in the artillery. An officer on a boundinghorse made maniacal motions with his arms. The teams went swinging up from therear, the guns were whirled about, and the battery scampered away. The cannonwith their noses poked slantingly at the ground grunted and grumbled like stoutmen, brave but with objections to hurry.

The youth went on, moderating his pace since he had left the place of noises.

Later he came upon a general of division seated upon a horse that pricked itsears in an interested way at the battle. There was a great gleaming of yellowand patent leather about the saddle and bridle. The quiet man astride lookedmouse-colored upon such a splendid charger.

A jingling staff was galloping hither and thither. Sometimes the general wassurrounded by horsemen and at other times he was quite alone. He looked to bemuch harassed. He had the appearance of a business man whose market is swingingup and down.

The youth went slinking around this spot. He went as near as he dared trying tooverhear words. Perhaps the general, unable to comprehend chaos, might callupon him for information. And he could tell him. He knew all concerning it. Ofa surety the force was in a fix, and any fool could see that if they did notretreat while they had opportunity—why—

He felt that he would like to thrash the general, or at least approach and tellhim in plain words exactly what he thought him to be. It was criminal to staycalmly in one spot and make no effort to stay destruction. He loitered in afever of eagerness for the division commander to apply to him.

As he warily moved about, he heard the general call out irritably:“Tompkins, go over an’ see Taylor, an’ tell him not t’be in such an all-fired hurry; tell him t’ halt his brigade in th’edge of th’ woods; tell him t’ detach a reg’ment—say Ithink th’ center ’ll break if we don’t help it out some; tellhim t’ hurry up.”

A slim youth on a fine chestnut horse caught these swift words from the mouthof his superior. He made his horse bound into a gallop almost from a walk inhis haste to go upon his mission. There was a cloud of dust.

A moment later the youth saw the general bounce excitedly in his saddle.

“Yes, by heavens, they have!” The officer leaned forward. His facewas aflame with excitement. “Yes, by heavens, they’ve held’im! They’ve held ’im!”

He began to blithely roar at his staff: “We’ll wallop ’imnow. We’ll wallop ’im now. We’ve got ’em sure.”He turned suddenly upon an aide:“Here—you—Jones—quick—ride afterTompkins—see Taylor—tell him t’ goin—everlastingly—like blazes—anything.”

As another officer sped his horse after the first messenger, the general beamedupon the earth like a sun. In his eyes was a desire to chant a paean. He keptrepeating, “They’ve held ’em, by heavens!”

His excitement made his horse plunge, and he merrily kicked and swore at it. Heheld a little carnival of joy on horseback.

Chapter VII.

The youth cringed as if discovered in a crime. By heavens, they had won afterall! The imbecile line had remained and become victors. He could hear cheering.

He lifted himself upon his toes and looked in the direction of the fight. Ayellow fog lay wallowing on the treetops. From beneath it came the clatter ofmusketry. Hoarse cries told of an advance.

He turned away amazed and angry. He felt that he had been wronged.

He had fled, he told himself, because annihilation approached. He had done agood part in saving himself, who was a little piece of the army. He hadconsidered the time, he said, to be one in which it was the duty of everylittle piece to rescue itself if possible. Later the officers could fit thelittle pieces together again, and make a battle front. If none of the littlepieces were wise enough to save themselves from the flurry of death at such atime, why, then, where would be the army? It was all plain that he hadproceeded according to very correct and commendable rules. His actions had beensagacious things. They had been full of strategy. They were the work of amaster’s legs.

Thoughts of his comrades came to him. The brittle blue line had withstood theblows and won. He grew bitter over it. It seemed that the blind ignorance andstupidity of those little pieces had betrayed him. He had been overturned andcrushed by their lack of sense in holding the position, when intelligentdeliberation would have convinced them that it was impossible. He, theenlightened man who looks afar in the dark, had fled because of his superiorperceptions and knowledge. He felt a great anger against his comrades. He knewit could be proved that they had been fools.

He wondered what they would remark when later he appeared in camp. His mindheard howls of derision. Their density would not enable them to understand hissharper point of view.

He began to pity himself acutely. He was ill used. He was trodden beneath thefeet of an iron injustice. He had proceeded with wisdom and from the mostrighteous motives under heaven’s blue only to be frustrated by hatefulcircumstances.

A dull, animal-like rebellion against his fellows, war in the abstract, andfate grew within him. He shambled along with bowed head, his brain in a tumultof agony and despair. When he looked loweringly up, quivering at each sound,his eyes had the expression of those of a criminal who thinks his guilt littleand his punishment great, and knows that he can find no words.

He went from the fields into a thick woods, as if resolved to bury himself. Hewished to get out of hearing of the crackling shots which were to him likevoices.

The ground was cluttered with vines and bushes, and the trees grew close andspread out like bouquets. He was obliged to force his way with much noise. Thecreepers, catching against his legs, cried out harshly as their sprays weretorn from the barks of trees. The swishing saplings tried to make known hispresence to the world. He could not conciliate the forest. As he made his way,it was always calling out protestations. When he separated embraces of treesand vines the disturbed foliages waved their arms and turned their face leavestoward him. He dreaded lest these noisy motions and cries should bring men tolook at him. So he went far, seeking dark and intricate places.

After a time the sound of musketry grew faint and the cannon boomed in thedistance. The sun, suddenly apparent, blazed among the trees. The insects weremaking rhythmical noises. They seemed to be grinding their teeth in unison. Awoodpecker stuck his impudent head around the side of a tree. A bird flew onlighthearted wing.

Off was the rumble of death. It seemed now that Nature had no ears.

This landscape gave him assurance. A fair field holding life. It was thereligion of peace. It would die if its timid eyes were compelled to see blood.He conceived Nature to be a woman with a deep aversion to tragedy.

He threw a pine cone at a jovial squirrel, and he ran with chattering fear.High in a treetop he stopped, and, poking his head cautiously from behind abranch, looked down with an air of trepidation.

The youth felt triumphant at this exhibition. There was the law, he said.Nature had given him a sign. The squirrel, immediately upon recognizing danger,had taken to his legs without ado. He did not stand stolidly baring his furrybelly to the missile, and die with an upward glance at the sympathetic heavens.On the contrary, he had fled as fast as his legs could carry him; and he wasbut an ordinary squirrel, too—doubtless no philosopher of his race. Theyouth wended, feeling that Nature was of his mind. She re-enforced his argumentwith proofs that lived where the sun shone.

Once he found himself almost into a swamp. He was obliged to walk upon bogtufts and watch his feet to keep from the oily mire. Pausing at one time tolook about him he saw, out at some black water, a small animal pounce in andemerge directly with a gleaming fish.

The youth went again into the deep thickets. The brushed branches made a noisethat drowned the sounds of cannon. He walked on, going from obscurity intopromises of a greater obscurity.

At length he reached a place where the high, arching boughs made a chapel. Hesoftly pushed the green doors aside and entered. Pine needles were a gentlebrown carpet. There was a religious half light.

Near the threshold he stopped, horror-stricken at the sight of a thing.

He was being looked at by a dead man who was seated with his back against acolumnlike tree. The corpse was dressed in a uniform that had once been blue,but was now faded to a melancholy shade of green. The eyes, staring at theyouth, had changed to the dull hue to be seen on the side of a dead fish. Themouth was open. Its red had changed to an appalling yellow. Over the gray skinof the face ran little ants. One was trundling some sort of bundle along theupper lip.

The youth gave a shriek as he confronted the thing. He was for moments turnedto stone before it. He remained staring into the liquid-looking eyes. The deadman and the living man exchanged a long look. Then the youth cautiously put onehand behind him and brought it against a tree. Leaning upon this he retreated,step by step, with his face still toward the thing. He feared that if he turnedhis back the body might spring up and stealthily pursue him.

The branches, pushing against him, threatened to throw him over upon it. Hisunguided feet, too, caught aggravatingly in brambles; and with it all hereceived a subtle suggestion to touch the corpse. As he thought of his handupon it he shuddered profoundly.

At last he burst the bonds which had fastened him to the spot and fled,unheeding the underbrush. He was pursued by the sight of black ants swarminggreedily upon the gray face and venturing horribly near to the eyes.

After a time he paused, and, breathless and panting, listened. He imagined somestrange voice would come from the dead throat and squawk after him in horriblemenaces.

The trees about the portal of the chapel moved soughingly in a soft wind. A sadsilence was upon the little guarding edifice.

Chapter VIII.

The trees began softly to sing a hymn of twilight. The sun sank until slantedbronze rays struck the forest. There was a lull in the noises of insects as ifthey had bowed their beaks and were making a devotional pause. There wassilence save for the chanted chorus of the trees.

Then, upon this stillness, there suddenly broke a tremendous clangor of sounds.A crimson roar came from the distance.

The youth stopped. He was transfixed by this terrific medley of all noises. Itwas as if worlds were being rended. There was the ripping sound of musketry andthe breaking crash of the artillery.

His mind flew in all directions. He conceived the two armies to be at eachother panther fashion. He listened for a time. Then he began to run in thedirection of the battle. He saw that it was an ironical thing for him to berunning thus toward that which he had been at such pains to avoid. But he said,in substance, to himself that if the earth and the moon were about to clash,many persons would doubtless plan to get upon the roofs to witness thecollision.

As he ran, he became aware that the forest had stopped its music, as if at lastbecoming capable of hearing the foreign sounds. The trees hushed and stoodmotionless. Everything seemed to be listening to the crackle and clatter andearthshaking thunder. The chorus peaked over the still earth.

It suddenly occurred to the youth that the fight in which he had been was,after all, but perfunctory popping. In the hearing of this present din he wasdoubtful if he had seen real battle scenes. This uproar explained a celestialbattle; it was tumbling hordes a-struggle in the air.

Reflecting, he saw a sort of a humor in the point of view of himself and hisfellows during the late encounter. They had taken themselves and the enemy veryseriously and had imagined that they were deciding the war. Individuals musthave supposed that they were cutting the letters of their names deep intoeverlasting tablets of brass, or enshrining their reputations forever in thehearts of their countrymen, while, as to fact, the affair would appear inprinted reports under a meek and immaterial title. But he saw that it was good,else, he said, in battle every one would surely run save forlorn hopes andtheir ilk.

He went rapidly on. He wished to come to the edge of the forest that he mightpeer out.

As he hastened, there passed through his mind pictures of stupendous conflicts.His accumulated thought upon such subjects was used to form scenes. The noisewas as the voice of an eloquent being, describing.

Sometimes the brambles formed chains and tried to hold him back. Trees,confronting him, stretched out their arms and forbade him to pass. After itsprevious hostility this new resistance of the forest filled him with a finebitterness. It seemed that Nature could not be quite ready to kill him.

But he obstinately took roundabout ways, and presently he was where he couldsee long gray walls of vapor where lay battle lines. The voices of cannon shookhim. The musketry sounded in long irregular surges that played havoc with hisears. He stood regardant for a moment. His eyes had an awestruck expression. Hegawked in the direction of the fight.

Presently he proceeded again on his forward way. The battle was like thegrinding of an immense and terrible machine to him. Its complexities andpowers, its grim processes, fascinated him. He must go close and see it producecorpses.

He came to a fence and clambered over it. On the far side, the ground waslittered with clothes and guns. A newspaper, folded up, lay in the dirt. A deadsoldier was stretched with his face hidden in his arm. Farther off there was agroup of four or five corpses keeping mournful company. A hot sun had blazedupon this spot.

In this place the youth felt that he was an invader. This forgotten part of thebattle ground was owned by the dead men, and he hurried, in the vagueapprehension that one of the swollen forms would rise and tell him to begone.

He came finally to a road from which he could see in the distance dark andagitated bodies of troops, smoke-fringed. In the lane was a blood-stained crowdstreaming to the rear. The wounded men were cursing, groaning, and wailing. Inthe air, always, was a mighty swell of sound that it seemed could sway theearth. With the courageous words of the artillery and the spiteful sentences ofthe musketry mingled red cheers. And from this region of noises came the steadycurrent of the maimed.

One of the wounded men had a shoeful of blood. He hopped like a schoolboy in agame. He was laughing hysterically.

One was swearing that he had been shot in the arm through the commandinggeneral’s mismanagement of the army. One was marching with an airimitative of some sublime drum major. Upon his features was an unholy mixtureof merriment and agony. As he marched he sang a bit of doggerel in a high andquavering voice:

“Sing a song ’a vic’try,
    A pocketful ’a bullets,
Five an’ twenty dead men
    Baked in a—pie.”

Parts of the procession limped and staggered to this tune.

Another had the gray seal of death already upon his face. His lips were curledin hard lines and his teeth were clinched. His hands were bloody from where hehad pressed them upon his wound. He seemed to be awaiting the moment when heshould pitch headlong. He stalked like the specter of a soldier, his eyesburning with the power of a stare into the unknown.

There were some who proceeded sullenly, full of anger at their wounds, andready to turn upon anything as an obscure cause.

An officer was carried along by two privates. He was peevish.“Don’t joggle so, Johnson, yeh fool,” he cried. “Thinkm’ leg is made of iron? If yeh can’t carry me decent, put me downan’ let some one else do it.”

He bellowed at the tottering crowd who blocked the quick march of his bearers.“Say, make way there, can’t yeh? Make way, dickens take itall.”

They sulkily parted and went to the roadsides. As he was carried past they madepert remarks to him. When he raged in reply and threatened them, they told himto be damned.

The shoulder of one of the tramping bearers knocked heavily against thespectral soldier who was staring into the unknown.

The youth joined this crowd and marched along with it. The torn bodiesexpressed the awful machinery in which the men had been entangled.

Orderlies and couriers occasionally broke through the throng in the roadway,scattering wounded men right and left, galloping on followed by howls. Themelancholy march was continually disturbed by the messengers, and sometimes bybustling batteries that came swinging and thumping down upon them, the officersshouting orders to clear the way.

There was a tattered man, fouled with dust, blood and powder stain from hair toshoes, who trudged quietly at the youth’s side. He was listening witheagerness and much humility to the lurid descriptions of a bearded sergeant.His lean features wore an expression of awe and admiration. He was like alistener in a country store to wondrous tales told among the sugar barrels. Heeyed the story-teller with unspeakable wonder. His mouth was agape in yokelfashion.

The sergeant, taking note of this, gave pause to his elaborate history while headministered a sardonic comment. “Be keerful, honey, you’ll bea-ketchin’ flies,” he said.

The tattered man shrank back abashed.

After a time he began to sidle near to the youth, and in a diffident way try tomake him a friend. His voice was gentle as a girl’s voice and his eyeswere pleading. The youth saw with surprise that the soldier had two wounds, onein the head, bound with a blood-soaked rag, and the other in the arm, makingthat member dangle like a broken bough.

After they had walked together for some time the tattered man musteredsufficient courage to speak. “Was pretty good fight, wa’n’tit?” he timidly said. The youth, deep in thought, glanced up at thebloody and grim figure with its lamblike eyes. “What?”

“Was pretty good fight, wa’n’t it?”

“Yes,” said the youth shortly. He quickened his pace.

But the other hobbled industriously after him. There was an air of apology inhis manner, but he evidently thought that he needed only to talk for a time,and the youth would perceive that he was a good fellow.

“Was pretty good fight, wa’n’t it?” he began in a smallvoice, and then he achieved the fortitude to continue. “Dern me if I eversee fellers fight so. Laws, how they did fight! I knowed th’ boys’dlike when they onct got square at it. Th’ boys ain’t had no fairchanct up t’ now, but this time they showed what they was. I knowedit’d turn out this way. Yeh can’t lick them boys. No, sir!They’re fighters, they be.”

He breathed a deep breath of humble admiration. He had looked at the youth forencouragement several times. He received none, but gradually he seemed to getabsorbed in his subject.

“I was talkin’ ’cross pickets with a boy from Georgie, onct,an’ that boy, he ses, ‘Your fellers ’ll all run like hellwhen they onct hearn a gun,’ he ses. ‘Mebbe they will,’ Ises, ‘but I don’t b’lieve none of it,’ I ses;‘an’ b’jiminey,’ I ses back t’ ’um,‘mebbe your fellers ’ll all run like hell when they onct hearn agun,’ I ses. He larfed. Well, they didn’t run t’ day, didthey, hey? No, sir! They fit, an’ fit, an’ fit.”

His homely face was suffused with a light of love for the army which was to himall things beautiful and powerful.

After a time he turned to the youth. “Where yeh hit, ol’boy?” he asked in a brotherly tone.

The youth felt instant panic at this question, although at first its fullimport was not borne in upon him.

“What?” he asked.

“Where yeh hit?” repeated the tattered man.

“Why,” began the youth, “I—I—thatis—why—I—”

He turned away suddenly and slid through the crowd. His brow was heavilyflushed, and his fingers were picking nervously at one of his buttons. He benthis head and fastened his eyes studiously upon the button as if it were alittle problem.

The tattered man looked after him in astonishment.

Chapter IX.

The youth fell back in the procession until the tattered soldier was not insight. Then he started to walk on with the others.

But he was amid wounds. The mob of men was bleeding. Because of the tatteredsoldier’s question he now felt that his shame could be viewed. He wascontinually casting sidelong glances to see if the men were contemplating theletters of guilt he felt burned into his brow.

At times he regarded the wounded soldiers in an envious way. He conceivedpersons with torn bodies to be peculiarly happy. He wished that he, too, had awound, a red badge of courage.

The spectral soldier was at his side like a stalking reproach. The man’seyes were still fixed in a stare into the unknown. His gray, appalling face hadattracted attention in the crowd, and men, slowing to his dreary pace, werewalking with him. They were discussing his plight, questioning him and givinghim advice. In a dogged way he repelled them, signing to them to go on andleave him alone. The shadows of his face were deepening and his tight lipsseemed holding in check the moan of great despair. There could be seen acertain stiffness in the movements of his body, as if he were taking infinitecare not to arouse the passion of his wounds. As he went on, he seemed alwayslooking for a place, like one who goes to choose a grave.

Something in the gesture of the man as he waved the bloody and pitying soldiersaway made the youth start as if bitten. He yelled in horror. Tottering forwardhe laid a quivering hand upon the man’s arm. As the latter slowly turnedhis waxlike features toward him the youth screamed:

“Gawd! Jim Conklin!”

The tall soldier made a little commonplace smile. “Hello, Henry,”he said.

The youth swayed on his legs and glared strangely. He stuttered and stammered.“Oh, Jim—oh, Jim—oh, Jim—”

The tall soldier held out his gory hand. There was a curious red and blackcombination of new blood and old blood upon it. “Where yeh been,Henry?” he asked. He continued in a monotonous voice, “I thoughtmebbe yeh got keeled over. There been thunder t’ pay t’-day. I wasworryin’ about it a good deal.”

The youth still lamented. “Oh, Jim—oh, Jim—oh,Jim—”

“Yeh know,” said the tall soldier, “I was out there.”He made a careful gesture. “An’, Lord, what a circus! An’,b’jiminey, I got shot—I got shot. Yes, b’jiminey, I gotshot.” He reiterated this fact in a bewildered way, as if he did not knowhow it came about.

The youth put forth anxious arms to assist him, but the tall soldier wentfirmly as if propelled. Since the youth’s arrival as a guardian for hisfriend, the other wounded men had ceased to display much interest. Theyoccupied themselves again in dragging their own tragedies toward the rear.

Suddenly, as the two friends marched on, the tall soldier seemed to be overcomeby a tremor. His face turned to a semblance of gray paste. He clutched theyouth’s arm and looked all about him, as if dreading to be overheard.Then he began to speak in a shaking whisper:

“I tell yeh what I’m ’fraid of, Henry—I’ll tellyeh what I’m ’fraid of. I’m ’fraid I’ll falldown—an’ then yeh know—them damned artillerywagons—they like as not ’ll run over me. That’s whatI’m ’fraid of—”

The youth cried out to him hysterically: “I’ll take care of yeh,Jim! I’ll take care of yeh! I swear t’ Gawd I will!”

“Sure—will yeh, Henry?” the tall soldier beseeched.

“Yes—yes—I tell yeh—I’ll take care of yeh,Jim!” protested the youth. He could not speak accurately because of thegulpings in his throat.

But the tall soldier continued to beg in a lowly way. He now hung babelike tothe youth’s arm. His eyes rolled in the wildness of his terror. “Iwas allus a good friend t’ yeh, wa’n’t I, Henry? I’veallus been a pretty good feller, ain’t I? An’ it ain’t mucht’ ask, is it? Jest t’ pull me along outer th’ road?I’d do it fer you, wouldn’t I, Henry?”

He paused in piteous anxiety to await his friend’s reply.

The youth had reached an anguish where the sobs scorched him. He strove toexpress his loyalty, but he could only make fantastic gestures.

However, the tall soldier seemed suddenly to forget all those fears. He becameagain the grim, stalking specter of a soldier. He went stonily forward. Theyouth wished his friend to lean upon him, but the other always shook his headand strangely protested. “No—no—no—leave mebe—leave me be—”

His look was fixed again upon the unknown. He moved with mysterious purpose,and all of the youth’s offers he brushed aside.“No—no—leave me be—leave me be—”

The youth had to follow.

Presently the latter heard a voice talking softly near his shoulder. Turning hesaw that it belonged to the tattered soldier. “Ye’d better take’im outa th’ road, pardner. There’s a batt’rycomin’ helitywhoop down th’ road an’ he’ll git runnedover. He’s a goner anyhow in about five minutes—yeh kin see that.Ye’d better take ’im outa th’ road. Where th’ blazesdoes hi git his stren’th from?”

“Lord knows!” cried the youth. He was shaking his hands helplessly.

He ran forward presently and grasped the tall soldier by the arm. “Jim!Jim!” he coaxed, “come with me.”

The tall soldier weakly tried to wrench himself free. “Huh,” hesaid vacantly. He stared at the youth for a moment. At last he spoke as ifdimly comprehending. “Oh! Inteh th’ fields? Oh!”

He started blindly through the grass.

The youth turned once to look at the lashing riders and jouncing guns of thebattery. He was startled from this view by a shrill outcry from the tatteredman.

“Gawd! He’s runnin’!”

Turning his head swiftly, the youth saw his friend running in a staggering andstumbling way toward a little clump of bushes. His heart seemed to wrenchitself almost free from his body at this sight. He made a noise of pain. He andthe tattered man began a pursuit. There was a singular race.

When he overtook the tall soldier he began to plead with all the words he couldfind. “Jim—Jim—what are you doing—what makes you dothis way—you’ll hurt yerself.”

The same purpose was in the tall soldier’s face. He protested in a dulledway, keeping his eyes fastened on the mystic place of his intentions.“No—no—don’t tech me—leave me be—leave mebe—”

The youth, aghast and filled with wonder at the tall soldier, began quaveringlyto question him. “Where yeh goin’, Jim? What you thinking about?Where you going? Tell me, won’t you, Jim?”

The tall soldier faced about as upon relentless pursuers. In his eyes there wasa great appeal. “Leave me be, can’t yeh? Leave me be for aminnit.”

The youth recoiled. “Why, Jim,” he said, in a dazed way,“what’s the matter with you?”

The tall soldier turned and, lurching dangerously, went on. The youth and thetattered soldier followed, sneaking as if whipped, feeling unable to face thestricken man if he should again confront them. They began to have thoughts of asolemn ceremony. There was something rite-like in these movements of the doomedsoldier. And there was a resemblance in him to a devotee of a mad religion,blood-sucking, muscle-wrenching, bone-crushing. They were awed and afraid. Theyhung back lest he have at command a dreadful weapon.

At last, they saw him stop and stand motionless. Hastening up, they perceivedthat his face wore an expression telling that he had at last found the placefor which he had struggled. His spare figure was erect; his bloody hands werequietly at his side. He was waiting with patience for something that he hadcome to meet. He was at the rendezvous. They paused and stood, expectant.

There was a silence.

Finally, the chest of the doomed soldier began to heave with a strained motion.It increased in violence until it was as if an animal was within and waskicking and tumbling furiously to be free.

This spectacle of gradual strangulation made the youth writhe, and once as hisfriend rolled his eyes, he saw something in them that made him sink wailing tothe ground. He raised his voice in a last supreme call.

“Jim—Jim—Jim—”

The tall soldier opened his lips and spoke. He made a gesture. “Leave mebe—don’t tech me—leave me be—”

There was another silence while he waited.

Suddenly his form stiffened and straightened. Then it was shaken by a prolongedague. He stared into space. To the two watchers there was a curious andprofound dignity in the firm lines of his awful face.

He was invaded by a creeping strangeness that slowly enveloped him. For amoment the tremor of his legs caused him to dance a sort of hideous hornpipe.His arms beat wildly about his head in expression of implike enthusiasm.

His tall figure stretched itself to its full height. There was a slight rendingsound. Then it began to swing forward, slow and straight, in the manner of afalling tree. A swift muscular contortion made the left shoulder strike theground first.

The body seemed to bounce a little way from the earth. “God!” saidthe tattered soldier.

The youth had watched, spellbound, this ceremony at the place of meeting. Hisface had been twisted into an expression of every agony he had imagined for hisfriend.

He now sprang to his feet and, going closer, gazed upon the pastelike face. Themouth was open and the teeth showed in a laugh.

As the flap of the blue jacket fell away from the body, he could see that theside looked as if it had been chewed by wolves.

The youth turned, with sudden, livid rage, toward the battlefield. He shook hisfist. He seemed about to deliver a philippic.

“Hell—”

The red sun was pasted in the sky like a wafer.

Chapter X.

The tattered man stood musing.

“Well, he was a reg’lar jim-dandy fer nerve, wa’n’the,” said he finally in a little awestruck voice. “A reg’larjim-dandy.” He thoughtfully poked one of the docile hands with his foot.“I wonner where he got ’is stren’th from? I never seen a mando like that before. It was a funny thing. Well, he was a reg’larjim-dandy.”

The youth desired to screech out his grief. He was stabbed, but his tongue laydead in the tomb of his mouth. He threw himself again upon the ground and beganto brood.

The tattered man stood musing.

“Look-a-here, pardner,” he said, after a time. He regarded thecorpse as he spoke. “He’s up an’ gone, ain’t ’e,an’ we might as well begin t’ look out fer ol’ number one.This here thing is all over. He’s up an’ gone, ain’t’e? An’ he’s all right here. Nobody won’t bother’im. An’ I must say I ain’t enjoying any great healthm’self these days.”

The youth, awakened by the tattered soldier’s tone, looked quickly up. Hesaw that he was swinging uncertainly on his legs and that his face had turnedto a shade of blue.

“Good Lord!” he cried, “you ain’t goin’t’—not you, too.”

The tattered man waved his hand. “Nary die,” he said. “All Iwant is some pea soup an’ a good bed. Some pea soup,” he repeateddreamfully.

The youth arose from the ground. “I wonder where he came from. I left himover there.” He pointed. “And now I find ’im here. And he wascoming from over there, too.” He indicated a new direction. They bothturned toward the body as if to ask of it a question.

“Well,” at length spoke the tattered man, “there ain’tno use in our stayin’ here an’ tryin’ t’ ask himanything.”

The youth nodded an assent wearily. They both turned to gaze for a moment atthe corpse.

The youth murmured something.

“Well, he was a jim-dandy, wa’n’t ’e?” said thetattered man as if in response.

They turned their backs upon it and started away. For a time they stole softly,treading with their toes. It remained laughing there in the grass.

“I’m commencin’ t’ feel pretty bad,” said thetattered man, suddenly breaking one of his little silences. “I’mcommencin’ t’ feel pretty damn’ bad.”

The youth groaned. “Oh Lord!” He wondered if he was to be thetortured witness of another grim encounter.

But his companion waved his hand reassuringly. “Oh, I’m notgoin’ t’ die yit! There too much dependin’ on me fer met’ die yit. No, sir! Nary die! I can’t!Ye’d oughtasee th’ swad a’ chil’ren I’ve got, an’ all likethat.”

The youth glancing at his companion could see by the shadow of a smile that hewas making some kind of fun.

As they plodded on the tattered soldier continued to talk. “Besides, if Idied, I wouldn’t die th’ way that feller did. That was th’funniest thing. I’d jest flop down, I would. I never seen a feller dieth’ way that feller did.

“Yeh know Tom Jamison, he lives next door t’ me up home. He’sa nice feller, he is, an’ we was allus good friends. Smart, too. Smart asa steel trap. Well, when we was a-fightin’ this atternoon,all-of-a-sudden he begin t’ rip up an’ cuss an’ beller at me.‘Yer shot, yeh blamed infernal!’—he swear horrible—heses t’ me. I put up m’ hand t’ m’ head an’ when Ilooked at m’ fingers, I seen, sure ’nough, I was shot. I give aholler an’ begin t’ run, but b’fore I could git away anotherone hit me in th’ arm an’ whirl’ me clean ’round. I gotskeared when they was all a-shootin’ b’hind me an’ I runt’ beat all, but I cotch it pretty bad. I’ve an idee I’d a’been fightin’ yit, if t’wasn’t fer Tom Jamison.”

Then he made a calm announcement: “There’s two of’em—little ones—but they’re beginnin’ t’have fun with me now. I don’t b’lieve I kin walk muchfurder.”

They went slowly on in silence. “Yeh look pretty peek’edyerself,” said the tattered man at last. “I bet yeh’ve got aworser one than yeh think. Ye’d better take keer of yer hurt. Itdon’t do t’ let sech things go. It might be inside mostly,an’ them plays thunder. Where is it located?” But he continued hisharangue without waiting for a reply. “I see a feller git hit plum inth’ head when my reg’ment was a-standin’ at ease onct.An’ everybody yelled to ’im: ‘Hurt, John? Are yeh hurtmuch?’ ‘No,’ ses he. He looked kinder surprised, an’ hewent on tellin’ ’em how he felt. He sed he didn’t feelnothin’. But, by dad, th’ first thing that feller knowed he wasdead. Yes, he was dead—stone dead. So, yeh wanta watch out. Yeh mighthave some queer kind ’a hurt yerself. Yeh can’t never tell. Whereis your’n located?”

The youth had been wriggling since the introduction of this topic. He now gavea cry of exasperation and made a furious motion with his hand. “Oh,don’t bother me!” he said. He was enraged against the tattered man,and could have strangled him. His companions seemed ever to play intolerableparts. They were ever upraising the ghost of shame on the stick of theircuriosity. He turned toward the tattered man as one at bay. “Now,don’t bother me,” he repeated with desperate menace.

“Well, Lord knows I don’t wanta bother anybody,” said theother. There was a little accent of despair in his voice as he replied,“Lord knows I’ve gota ’nough m’ own t’ tendto.”

The youth, who had been holding a bitter debate with himself and castingglances of hatred and contempt at the tattered man, here spoke in a hard voice.“Good-by,” he said.

The tattered man looked at him in gaping amazement. “Why—why,pardner, where yeh goin’?” he asked unsteadily. The youth lookingat him, could see that he, too, like that other one, was beginning to act dumband animal-like. His thoughts seemed to be floundering about in his head.“Now—now—look—a—here, you TomJamison—now—I won’t have this—this here won’t do.Where—where yeh goin’?”

The youth pointed vaguely. “Over there,” he replied.

“Well, now look—a—here—now,” said the tatteredman, rambling on in idiot fashion. His head was hanging forward and his wordswere slurred. “This thing won’t do, now, Tom Jamison. Itwon’t do. I know yeh, yeh pig-headed devil. Yeh wanta go trompin’off with a bad hurt. It ain’t right—now—Tom Jamison—itain’t. Yeh wanta leave me take keer of yeh, Tom Jamison. Itain’t—right—it ain’t—fer yeh t’go—trompin’ off—with a bad hurt—itain’t—ain’t—ain’t right—itain’t.”

In reply the youth climbed a fence and started away. He could hear the tatteredman bleating plaintively.

Once he faced about angrily. “What?”

“Look—a—here, now, Tom Jamison—now—itain’t—”

The youth went on. Turning at a distance he saw the tattered man wanderingabout helplessly in the field.

He now thought that he wished he was dead. He believed he envied those menwhose bodies lay strewn over the grass of the fields and on the fallen leavesof the forest.

The simple questions of the tattered man had been knife thrusts to him. Theyasserted a society that probes pitilessly at secrets until all is apparent. Hislate companion’s chance persistency made him feel that he could not keephis crime concealed in his bosom. It was sure to be brought plain by one ofthose arrows which cloud the air and are constantly pricking, discovering,proclaiming those things which are willed to be forever hidden. He admittedthat he could not defend himself against this agency. It was not within thepower of vigilance.

Chapter XI.

He became aware that the furnace roar of the battle was growing louder. Greatblown clouds had floated to the still heights of air before him. The noise,too, was approaching. The woods filtered men and the fields became dotted.

As he rounded a hillock, he perceived that the roadway was now a crying mass ofwagons, teams, and men. From the heaving tangle issued exhortations, commands,imprecations. Fear was sweeping it all along. The cracking whips bit and horsesplunged and tugged. The white-topped wagons strained and stumbled in theirexertions like fat sheep.

The youth felt comforted in a measure by this sight. They were all retreating.Perhaps, then, he was not so bad after all. He seated himself and watched theterror-stricken wagons. They fled like soft, ungainly animals. All the roarersand lashers served to help him to magnify the dangers and horrors of theengagement that he might try to prove to himself that the thing with which mencould charge him was in truth a symmetrical act. There was an amount ofpleasure to him in watching the wild march of this vindication.

Presently the calm head of a forward-going column of infantry appeared in theroad. It came swiftly on. Avoiding the obstructions gave it the sinuousmovement of a serpent. The men at the head butted mules with their musketstocks. They prodded teamsters indifferent to all howls. The men forced theirway through parts of the dense mass by strength. The blunt head of the columnpushed. The raving teamsters swore many strange oaths.

The commands to make way had the ring of a great importance in them. The menwere going forward to the heart of the din. They were to confront the eagerrush of the enemy. They felt the pride of their onward movement when theremainder of the army seemed trying to dribble down this road. They tumbledteams about with a fine feeling that it was no matter so long as their columngot to the front in time. This importance made their faces grave and stern. Andthe backs of the officers were very rigid.

As the youth looked at them the black weight of his woe returned to him. Hefelt that he was regarding a procession of chosen beings. The separation was asgreat to him as if they had marched with weapons of flame and banners ofsunlight. He could never be like them. He could have wept in his longings.

He searched about in his mind for an adequate malediction for the indefinitecause, the thing upon which men turn the words of final blame.It—whatever it was—was responsible for him, he said. There lay thefault.

The haste of the column to reach the battle seemed to the forlorn young man tobe something much finer than stout fighting. Heroes, he thought, could findexcuses in that long seething lane. They could retire with perfect self-respectand make excuses to the stars.

He wondered what those men had eaten that they could be in such haste to forcetheir way to grim chances of death. As he watched his envy grew until hethought that he wished to change lives with one of them. He would have liked tohave used a tremendous force, he said, throw off himself and become a better.Swift pictures of himself, apart, yet in himself, came to him—a bluedesperate figure leading lurid charges with one knee forward and a broken bladehigh—a blue, determined figure standing before a crimson and steelassault, getting calmly killed on a high place before the eyes of all. Hethought of the magnificent pathos of his dead body.

These thoughts uplifted him. He felt the quiver of war desire. In his ears, heheard the ring of victory. He knew the frenzy of a rapid successful charge. Themusic of the trampling feet, the sharp voices, the clanking arms of the columnnear him made him soar on the red wings of war. For a few moments he wassublime.

He thought that he was about to start for the front. Indeed, he saw a pictureof himself, dust-stained, haggard, panting, flying to the front at the propermoment to seize and throttle the dark, leering witch of calamity.

Then the difficulties of the thing began to drag at him. He hesitated,balancing awkwardly on one foot.

He had no rifle; he could not fight with his hands, said he resentfully to hisplan. Well, rifles could be had for the picking. They were extraordinarilyprofuse.

Also, he continued, it would be a miracle if he found his regiment. Well, hecould fight with any regiment.

He started forward slowly. He stepped as if he expected to tread upon someexplosive thing. Doubts and he were struggling.

He would truly be a worm if any of his comrades should see him returning thus,the marks of his flight upon him. There was a reply that the intent fightersdid not care for what happened rearward saving that no hostile bayonetsappeared there. In the battle-blur his face would, in a way, be hidden, likethe face of a cowled man.

But then he said that his tireless fate would bring forth, when the strifelulled for a moment, a man to ask of him an explanation. In imagination he feltthe scrutiny of his companions as he painfully labored through some lies.

Eventually, his courage expended itself upon these objections. The debatesdrained him of his fire.

He was not cast down by this defeat of his plan, for, upon studying the affaircarefully, he could not but admit that the objections were very formidable.

Furthermore, various ailments had begun to cry out. In their presence he couldnot persist in flying high with the wings of war; they rendered it almostimpossible for him to see himself in a heroic light. He tumbled headlong.

He discovered that he had a scorching thirst. His face was so dry and grimythat he thought he could feel his skin crackle. Each bone of his body had anache in it, and seemingly threatened to break with each movement. His feet werelike two sores. Also, his body was calling for food. It was more powerful thana direct hunger. There was a dull, weight-like feeling in his stomach, and,when he tried to walk, his head swayed and he tottered. He could not see withdistinctness. Small patches of green mist floated before his vision.

While he had been tossed by many emotions, he had not been aware of ailments.Now they beset him and made clamor. As he was at last compelled to payattention to them, his capacity for self-hate was multiplied. In despair, hedeclared that he was not like those others. He now conceded it to be impossiblethat he should ever become a hero. He was a craven loon. Those pictures ofglory were piteous things. He groaned from his heart and went staggering off.

A certain mothlike quality within him kept him in the vicinity of the battle.He had a great desire to see, and to get news. He wished to know who waswinning.

He told himself that, despite his unprecedented suffering, he had never losthis greed for a victory, yet, he said, in a half-apologetic manner to hisconscience, he could not but know that a defeat for the army this time mightmean many favorable things for him. The blows of the enemy would splinterregiments into fragments. Thus, many men of courage, he considered, would beobliged to desert the colors and scurry like chickens. He would appear as oneof them. They would be sullen brothers in distress, and he could then easilybelieve he had not run any farther or faster than they. And if he himself couldbelieve in his virtuous perfection, he conceived that there would be smalltrouble in convincing all others.

He said, as if in excuse for this hope, that previously the army hadencountered great defeats and in a few months had shaken off all blood andtradition of them, emerging as bright and valiant as a new one; thrusting outof sight the memory of disaster, and appearing with the valor and confidence ofunconquered legions. The shrilling voices of the people at home would pipedismally for a time, but various generals were usually compelled to listen tothese ditties. He of course felt no compunctions for proposing a general as asacrifice. He could not tell who the chosen for the barbs might be, so he couldcenter no direct sympathy upon him. The people were afar and he did notconceive public opinion to be accurate at long range. It was quite probablethey would hit the wrong man who, after he had recovered from his amazementwould perhaps spend the rest of his days in writing replies to the songs of hisalleged failure. It would be very unfortunate, no doubt, but in this case ageneral was of no consequence to the youth.

In a defeat there would be a roundabout vindication of himself. He thought itwould prove, in a manner, that he had fled early because of his superior powersof perception. A serious prophet upon predicting a flood should be the firstman to climb a tree. This would demonstrate that he was indeed a seer.

A moral vindication was regarded by the youth as a very important thing.Without salve, he could not, he thought, wear the sore badge of his dishonorthrough life. With his heart continually assuring him that he was despicable,he could not exist without making it, through his actions, apparent to all men.

If the army had gone gloriously on he would be lost. If the din meant that nowhis army’s flags were tilted forward he was a condemned wretch. He wouldbe compelled to doom himself to isolation. If the men were advancing, theirindifferent feet were trampling upon his chances for a successful life.

As these thoughts went rapidly through his mind, he turned upon them and triedto thrust them away. He denounced himself as a villain. He said that he was themost unutterably selfish man in existence. His mind pictured the soldiers whowould place their defiant bodies before the spear of the yelling battle fiend,and as he saw their dripping corpses on an imagined field, he said that he wastheir murderer.

Again he thought that he wished he was dead. He believed that he envied acorpse. Thinking of the slain, he achieved a great contempt for some of them,as if they were guilty for thus becoming lifeless. They might have been killedby lucky chances, he said, before they had had opportunities to flee or beforethey had been really tested. Yet they would receive laurels from tradition. Hecried out bitterly that their crowns were stolen and their robes of gloriousmemories were shams. However, he still said that it was a great pity he was notas they.

A defeat of the army had suggested itself to him as a means of escape from theconsequences of his fall. He considered, now, however, that it was useless tothink of such a possibility. His education had been that success for thatmighty blue machine was certain; that it would make victories as a contrivanceturns out buttons. He presently discarded all his speculations in the otherdirection. He returned to the creed of soldiers.

When he perceived again that it was not possible for the army to be defeated,he tried to bethink him of a fine tale which he could take back to hisregiment, and with it turn the expected shafts of derision.

But, as he mortally feared these shafts, it became impossible for him to inventa tale he felt he could trust. He experimented with many schemes, but threwthem aside one by one as flimsy. He was quick to see vulnerable places in themall.

Furthermore, he was much afraid that some arrow of scorn might lay him mentallylow before he could raise his protecting tale.

He imagined the whole regiment saying: “Where’s Henry Fleming? Herun, didn’t ’e? Oh, my!” He recalled various persons whowould be quite sure to leave him no peace about it. They would doubtlessquestion him with sneers, and laugh at his stammering hesitation. In the nextengagement they would try to keep watch of him to discover when he would run.

Wherever he went in camp, he would encounter insolent and lingeringly cruelstares. As he imagined himself passing near a crowd of comrades, he could hearone say, “There he goes!”

Then, as if the heads were moved by one muscle, all the faces were turnedtoward him with wide, derisive grins. He seemed to hear some one make ahumorous remark in a low tone. At it the others all crowed and cackled. He wasa slang phrase.

Chapter XII.

The column that had butted stoutly at the obstacles in the roadway was barelyout of the youth’s sight before he saw dark waves of men come sweepingout of the woods and down through the fields. He knew at once that the steelfibers had been washed from their hearts. They were bursting from their coatsand their equipments as from entanglements. They charged down upon him liketerrified buffaloes.

Behind them blue smoke curled and clouded above the treetops, and through thethickets he could sometimes see a distant pink glare. The voices of the cannonwere clamoring in interminable chorus.

The youth was horrorstricken. He stared in agony and amazement. He forgot thathe was engaged in combating the universe. He threw aside his mental pamphletson the philosophy of the retreated and rules for the guidance of the damned.

The fight was lost. The dragons were coming with invincible strides. The army,helpless in the matted thickets and blinded by the overhanging night, was goingto be swallowed. War, the red animal, war, the blood-swollen god, would havebloated fill.

Within him something bade to cry out. He had the impulse to make a rallyingspeech, to sing a battle hymn, but he could only get his tongue to call intothe air: “Why—why—what—what’s th’matter?”

Soon he was in the midst of them. They were leaping and scampering all abouthim. Their blanched faces shone in the dusk. They seemed, for the most part, tobe very burly men. The youth turned from one to another of them as theygalloped along. His incoherent questions were lost. They were heedless of hisappeals. They did not seem to see him.

They sometimes gabbled insanely. One huge man was asking of the sky:“Say, where de plank road? Where de plank road!” It was as if hehad lost a child. He wept in his pain and dismay.

Presently, men were running hither and thither in all ways. The artillerybooming, forward, rearward, and on the flanks made jumble of ideas ofdirection. Landmarks had vanished into the gathered gloom. The youth began toimagine that he had got into the center of the tremendous quarrel, and he couldperceive no way out of it. From the mouths of the fleeing men came a thousandwild questions, but no one made answers.

The youth, after rushing about and throwing interrogations at the heedlessbands of retreating infantry, finally clutched a man by the arm. They swungaround face to face.

“Why—why—” stammered the youth struggling with hisbalking tongue.

The man screamed: “Let go me! Let go me!” His face was livid andhis eyes were rolling uncontrolled. He was heaving and panting. He stillgrasped his rifle, perhaps having forgotten to release his hold upon it. Hetugged frantically, and the youth being compelled to lean forward was draggedseveral paces.

“Let go me! Let go me!”

“Why—why—” stuttered the youth.

“Well, then!” bawled the man in a lurid rage. He adroitly andfiercely swung his rifle. It crushed upon the youth’s head. The man ranon.

The youth’s fingers had turned to paste upon the other’s arm. Theenergy was smitten from his muscles. He saw the flaming wings of lightningflash before his vision. There was a deafening rumble of thunder within hishead.

Suddenly his legs seemed to die. He sank writhing to the ground. He tried toarise. In his efforts against the numbing pain he was like a man wrestling witha creature of the air.

There was a sinister struggle.

Sometimes he would achieve a position half erect, battle with the air for amoment, and then fall again, grabbing at the grass. His face was of a clammypallor. Deep groans were wrenched from him.

At last, with a twisting movement, he got upon his hands and knees, and fromthence, like a babe trying to walk, to his feet. Pressing his hands to histemples he went lurching over the grass.

He fought an intense battle with his body. His dulled senses wished him toswoon and he opposed them stubbornly, his mind portraying unknown dangers andmutilations if he should fall upon the field. He went tall soldier fashion. Heimagined secluded spots where he could fall and be unmolested. To search forone he strove against the tide of pain.

Once he put his hand to the top of his head and timidly touched the wound. Thescratching pain of the contact made him draw a long breath through his clinchedteeth. His fingers were dabbled with blood. He regarded them with a fixedstare.

Around him he could hear the grumble of jolted cannon as the scurrying horseswere lashed toward the front. Once, a young officer on a besplashed chargernearly ran him down. He turned and watched the mass of guns, men, and horsessweeping in a wide curve toward a gap in a fence. The officer was makingexcited motions with a gauntleted hand. The guns followed the teams with an airof unwillingness, of being dragged by the heels.

Some officers of the scattered infantry were cursing and railing likefishwives. Their scolding voices could be heard above the din. Into theunspeakable jumble in the roadway rode a squadron of cavalry. The faded yellowof their facings shone bravely. There was a mighty altercation.

The artillery were assembling as if for a conference.

The blue haze of evening was upon the field. The lines of forest were longpurple shadows. One cloud lay along the western sky partly smothering the red.

As the youth left the scene behind him, he heard the guns suddenly roar out. Heimagined them shaking in black rage. They belched and howled like brass devilsguarding a gate. The soft air was filled with the tremendous remonstrance. Withit came the shattering peal of opposing infantry. Turning to look behind him,he could see sheets of orange light illumine the shadowy distance. There weresubtle and sudden lightnings in the far air. At times he thought he could seeheaving masses of men.

He hurried on in the dusk. The day had faded until he could barely distinguishplace for his feet. The purple darkness was filled with men who lectured andjabbered. Sometimes he could see them gesticulating against the blue and sombersky. There seemed to be a great ruck of men and munitions spread about in theforest and in the fields.

The little narrow roadway now lay lifeless. There were overturned wagons likesun-dried bowlders. The bed of the former torrent was choked with the bodies ofhorses and splintered parts of war machines.

It had come to pass that his wound pained him but little. He was afraid to moverapidly, however, for a dread of disturbing it. He held his head very still andtook many precautions against stumbling. He was filled with anxiety, and hisface was pinched and drawn in anticipation of the pain of any sudden mistake ofhis feet in the gloom.

His thoughts, as he walked, fixed intently upon his hurt. There was a cool,liquid feeling about it and he imagined blood moving slowly down under hishair. His head seemed swollen to a size that made him think his neck to beinadequate.

The new silence of his wound made much worriment. The little blistering voicesof pain that had called out from his scalp were, he thought, definite in theirexpression of danger. By them he believed he could measure his plight. But whenthey remained ominously silent he became frightened and imagined terriblefingers that clutched into his brain.

Amid it he began to reflect upon various incidents and conditions of the past.He bethought him of certain meals his mother had cooked at home, in which thosedishes of which he was particularly fond had occupied prominent positions. Hesaw the spread table. The pine walls of the kitchen were glowing in the warmlight from the stove. Too, he remembered how he and his companions used to gofrom the school-house to the bank of a shaded pool. He saw his clothes indisorderly array upon the grass of the bank. He felt the swash of the fragrantwater upon his body. The leaves of the overhanging maple rustled with melody inthe wind of youthful summer.

He was overcome presently by a dragging weariness. His head hung forward andhis shoulders were stooped as if he were bearing a great bundle. His feetshuffled along the ground.

He held continuous arguments as to whether he should lie down and sleep at somenear spot, or force himself on until he reached a certain haven. He often triedto dismiss the question, but his body persisted in rebellion and his sensesnagged at him like pampered babies.

At last he heard a cheery voice near his shoulder: “Yeh seem t’ bein a pretty bad way, boy?”

The youth did not look up, but he assented with thick tongue. “Uh!”

The owner of the cheery voice took him firmly by the arm. “Well,”he said, with a round laugh, “I’m goin’ your way. Th’hull gang is goin’ your way. An’ I guess I kin give yeh alift.” They began to walk like a drunken man and his friend.

As they went along, the man questioned the youth and assisted him with thereplies like one manipulating the mind of a child. Sometimes he interjectedanecdotes. “What reg’ment do yeh b’long teh? Eh? What’sthat? Th’ 304th N’ York? Why, what corps is that in? Oh, it is?Why, I thought they wasn’t engaged t’-day-they’re ’wayover in th’ center. Oh, they was, eh? Well pretty nearly everybody gottheir share ’a fightin’ t’-day. By dad, I give myself up ferdead any number ’a times. There was shootin’ here an’shootin’ there, an’ hollerin’ here an’ hollerin’there, in th’ damn’ darkness, until I couldn’t tell t’save m’ soul which side I was on. Sometimes I thought I was sure’nough from Ohier, an’ other times I could ’a swore I wasfrom th’ bitter end of Florida. It was th’ most mixed up dern thingI ever see. An’ these here hull woods is a reg’lar mess.It’ll be a miracle if we find our reg’ments t’-night. Prettysoon, though, we’ll meet a-plenty of guards an’ provost-guards,an’ one thing an’ another. Ho! there they go with an off’cer,I guess. Look at his hand a-draggin’. He’s got all th’ war hewants, I bet. He won’t be talkin’ so big about his reputationan’ all when they go t’ sawin’ off his leg. Poor feller! Mybrother’s got whiskers jest like that. How did yeh git ’way overhere, anyhow? Your reg’ment is a long way from here, ain’t it?Well, I guess we can find it. Yeh know there was a boy killed in mycomp’ny t’-day that I thought th’ world an’ all of.Jack was a nice feller. By ginger, it hurt like thunder t’ see ol’Jack jest git knocked flat. We was a-standin’ purty peaceable fer aspell, ’though there was men runnin’ ev’ry way all’round us, an’ while we was a-standin’ like that, ’longcome a big fat feller. He began t’ peck at Jack’s elbow, an’he ses: ‘Say, where’s th’ road t’ th’river?’ An’ Jack, he never paid no attention, an’ th’feller kept on a-peckin’ at his elbow an’ sayin’: ‘Say,where’s th’ road t’ th’ river?’ Jack wasa-lookin’ ahead all th’ time tryin’ t’ see th’Johnnies comin’ through th’ woods, an’ he never paid noattention t’ this big fat feller fer a long time, but at last he turned’round an’ he ses: ‘Ah, go t’ hell an’ findth’ road t’ th’ river!’ An’ jest then a shotslapped him bang on th’ side th’ head. He was a sergeant, too. Themwas his last words. Thunder, I wish we was sure ’a findin’ ourreg’ments t’-night. It’s goin’ t’ be longhuntin’. But I guess we kin do it.”

In the search which followed, the man of the cheery voice seemed to the youthto possess a wand of a magic kind. He threaded the mazes of the tangled forestwith a strange fortune. In encounters with guards and patrols he displayed thekeenness of a detective and the valor of a gamin. Obstacles fell before him andbecame of assistance. The youth, with his chin still on his breast, stoodwoodenly by while his companion beat ways and means out of sullen things.

The forest seemed a vast hive of men buzzing about in frantic circles, but thecheery man conducted the youth without mistakes, until at last he began tochuckle with glee and self-satisfaction. “Ah, there yeh are! See thatfire?”

The youth nodded stupidly.

“Well, there’s where your reg’ment is. An’ now,good-by, ol’ boy, good luck t’ yeh.”

A warm and strong hand clasped the youth’s languid fingers for aninstant, and then he heard a cheerful and audacious whistling as the man strodeaway. As he who had so befriended him was thus passing out of his life, itsuddenly occurred to the youth that he had not once seen his face.

Chapter XIII.

The youth went slowly toward the fire indicated by his departed friend. As hereeled, he bethought him of the welcome his comrades would give him. He had aconviction that he would soon feel in his sore heart the barbed missiles ofridicule. He had no strength to invent a tale; he would be a soft target.

He made vague plans to go off into the deeper darkness and hide, but they wereall destroyed by the voices of exhaustion and pain from his body. His ailments,clamoring, forced him to seek the place of food and rest, at whatever cost.

He swung unsteadily toward the fire. He could see the forms of men throwingblack shadows in the red light, and as he went nearer it became known to him insome way that the ground was strewn with sleeping men.

Of a sudden he confronted a black and monstrous figure. A rifle barrel caughtsome glinting beams. “Halt! halt!” He was dismayed for a moment,but he presently thought that he recognized the nervous voice. As he stoodtottering before the rifle barrel, he called out: “Why, hello, Wilson,you—you here?”

The rifle was lowered to a position of caution and the loud soldier came slowlyforward. He peered into the youth’s face. “That you, Henry?”

“Yes, it’s—it’s me.”

“Well, well, ol’ boy,” said the other, “by ginger,I’m glad t’ see yeh! I give yeh up fer a goner. I thought yeh wasdead sure enough.” There was husky emotion in his voice.

The youth found that now he could barely stand upon his feet. There was asudden sinking of his forces. He thought he must hasten to produce his tale toprotect him from the missiles already on the lips of his redoubtable comrades.So, staggering before the loud soldier, he began: “Yes, yes.I’ve—I’ve had an awful time. I’ve been all over. Wayover on th’ right. Ter’ble fightin’ over there. I had anawful time. I got separated from the reg’ment. Over on th’ right, Igot shot. In th’ head. I never see sech fightin’. Awful time. Idon’t see how I could a’ got separated from th’reg’ment. I got shot, too.”

His friend had stepped forward quickly. “What? Got shot? Why didn’tyeh say so first? Poor ol’ boy, we must—hol’ on a minnit;what am I doin’. I’ll call Simpson.”

Another figure at that moment loomed in the gloom. They could see that it wasthe corporal. “Who yeh talkin’ to, Wilson?” he demanded. Hisvoice was anger-toned. “Who yeh talkin’ to? Yeh th’ derndestsentinel—why—hello, Henry, you here? Why, I thought you was deadfour hours ago! Great Jerusalem, they keep turnin’ up every ten minutesor so! We thought we’d lost forty-two men by straight count, but if theykeep on a-comin’ this way, we’ll git th’ comp’ny allback by mornin’ yit. Where was yeh?”

“Over on th’ right. I got separated”—began the youthwith considerable glibness.

But his friend had interrupted hastily. “Yes, an’ he got shot inth’ head an’ he’s in a fix, an’ we must see t’him right away.” He rested his rifle in the hollow of his left arm andhis right around the youth’s shoulder.

“Gee, it must hurt like thunder!” he said.

The youth leaned heavily upon his friend. “Yes, it hurts—hurts agood deal,” he replied. There was a faltering in his voice.

“Oh,” said the corporal. He linked his arm in the youth’s anddrew him forward. “Come on, Henry. I’ll take keer ’ayeh.”

As they went on together the loud private called out after them: “Put’im t’ sleep in my blanket, Simpson. An’—hol’ ona minnit—here’s my canteen. It’s full ’a coffee. Lookat his head by th’ fire an’ see how it looks. Maybe it’s apretty bad un. When I git relieved in a couple ’a minnits, I’ll beover an’ see t’ him.”

The youth’s senses were so deadened that his friend’s voice soundedfrom afar and he could scarcely feel the pressure of the corporal’s arm.He submitted passively to the latter’s directing strength. His head wasin the old manner hanging forward upon his breast. His knees wobbled.

The corporal led him into the glare of the fire. “Now, Henry,” hesaid, “let’s have look at yer ol’ head.”

The youth sat obediently and the corporal, laying aside his rifle, began tofumble in the bushy hair of his comrade. He was obliged to turn theother’s head so that the full flush of the fire light would beam upon it.He puckered his mouth with a critical air. He drew back his lips and whistledthrough his teeth when his fingers came in contact with the splashed blood andthe rare wound.

“Ah, here we are!” he said. He awkwardly made furtherinvestigations. “Jest as I thought,” he added, presently.“Yeh’ve been grazed by a ball. It’s raised a queer lump jestas if some feller had lammed yeh on th’ head with a club. It stoppeda-bleedin’ long time ago. Th’ most about it is that in th’mornin’ yeh’ll fell that a number ten hat wouldn’t fit yeh.An’ your head’ll be all het up an’ feel as dry as burnt pork.An’ yeh may git a lot ’a other sicknesses, too, by mornin’.Yeh can’t never tell. Still, I don’t much think so. It’s jesta damn’ good belt on th’ head, an’ nothin’ more. Now,you jest sit here an’ don’t move, while I go rout out th’relief. Then I’ll send Wilson t’ take keer ’a yeh.”

The corporal went away. The youth remained on the ground like a parcel. Hestared with a vacant look into the fire.

After a time he aroused, for some part, and the things about him began to takeform. He saw that the ground in the deep shadows was cluttered with men,sprawling in every conceivable posture. Glancing narrowly into the more distantdarkness, he caught occasional glimpses of visages that loomed pallid andghostly, lit with a phosphorescent glow. These faces expressed in their linesthe deep stupor of the tired soldiers. They made them appear like men drunkwith wine. This bit of forest might have appeared to an ethereal wanderer as ascene of the result of some frightful debauch.

On the other side of the fire the youth observed an officer asleep, seated boltupright, with his back against a tree. There was something perilous in hisposition. Badgered by dreams, perhaps, he swayed with little bounces andstarts, like an old, toddy-stricken grandfather in a chimney corner. Dust andstains were upon his face. His lower jaw hung down as if lacking strength toassume its normal position. He was the picture of an exhausted soldier after afeast of war.

He had evidently gone to sleep with his sword in his arms. These two hadslumbered in an embrace, but the weapon had been allowed in time to fallunheeded to the ground. The brass-mounted hilt lay in contact with some partsof the fire.

Within the gleam of rose and orange light from the burning sticks were othersoldiers, snoring and heaving, or lying deathlike in slumber. A few pairs oflegs were stuck forth, rigid and straight. The shoes displayed the mud or dustof marches and bits of rounded trousers, protruding from the blankets, showedrents and tears from hurried pitchings through the dense brambles.

The fire cackled musically. From it swelled light smoke. Overhead the foliagemoved softly. The leaves, with their faces turned toward the blaze, werecolored shifting hues of silver, often edged with red. Far off to the right,through a window in the forest could be seen a handful of stars lying, likeglittering pebbles, on the black level of the night.

Occasionally, in this low-arched hall, a soldier would arouse and turn his bodyto a new position, the experience of his sleep having taught him of uneven andobjectionable places upon the ground under him. Or, perhaps, he would lifthimself to a sitting posture, blink at the fire for an unintelligent moment,throw a swift glance at his prostrate companion, and then cuddle down againwith a grunt of sleepy content.

The youth sat in a forlorn heap until his friend the loud young soldier came,swinging two canteens by their light strings. “Well, now, Henry,ol’ boy,” said the latter, “we’ll have yeh fixed up injest about a minnit.”

He had the bustling ways of an amateur nurse. He fussed around the fire andstirred the sticks to brilliant exertions. He made his patient drink largelyfrom the canteen that contained the coffee. It was to the youth a deliciousdraught. He tilted his head afar back and held the canteen long to his lips.The cool mixture went caressingly down his blistered throat. Having finished,he sighed with comfortable delight.

The loud young soldier watched his comrade with an air of satisfaction. Helater produced an extensive handkerchief from his pocket. He folded it into amanner of bandage and soused water from the other canteen upon the middle ofit. This crude arrangement he bound over the youth’s head, tying the endsin a queer knot at the back of the neck.

“There,” he said, moving off and surveying his deed, “yehlook like th’ devil, but I bet yeh feel better.”

The youth contemplated his friend with grateful eyes. Upon his aching andswelling head the cold cloth was like a tender woman’s hand.

“Yeh don’t holler ner say nothin’,” remarked his friendapprovingly. “I know I’m a blacksmith at takin’ keer ’asick folks, an’ yeh never squeaked. Yer a good un, Henry. Most ’amen would a’ been in th’ hospital long ago. A shot in th’head ain’t foolin’ business.”

The youth made no reply, but began to fumble with the buttons of his jacket.

“Well, come, now,” continued his friend, “come on. I must putyeh t’ bed an’ see that yeh git a good night’s rest.”

The other got carefully erect, and the loud young soldier led him among thesleeping forms lying in groups and rows. Presently he stooped and picked up hisblankets. He spread the rubber one upon the ground and placed the woolen oneabout the youth’s shoulders.

“There now,” he said, “lie down an’ git somesleep.”

The youth, with his manner of doglike obedience, got carefully down like acrone stooping. He stretched out with a murmur of relief and comfort. Theground felt like the softest couch.

But of a sudden he ejaculated: “Hol’ on a minnit! Where yougoin’ t’ sleep?”

His friend waved his hand impatiently. “Right down there by yeh.”

“Well, but hol’ on a minnit,” continued the youth.“What yeh goin’ t’ sleep in? I’ve gotyour—”

The loud young soldier snarled: “Shet up an’ go on t’ sleep.Don’t be makin’ a damn’ fool ’a yerself,” he saidseverely.

After the reproof the youth said no more. An exquisite drowsiness had spreadthrough him. The warm comfort of the blanket enveloped him and made a gentlelangour. His head fell forward on his crooked arm and his weighted lids wentsoftly down over his eyes. Hearing a splatter of musketry from the distance, hewondered indifferently if those men sometimes slept. He gave a long sigh,snuggled down into his blanket, and in a moment was like his comrades.

Chapter XIV.

When the youth awoke it seemed to him that he had been asleep for a thousandyears, and he felt sure that he opened his eyes upon an unexpected world. Graymists were slowly shifting before the first efforts of the sun rays. Animpending splendor could be seen in the eastern sky. An icy dew had chilled hisface, and immediately upon arousing he curled farther down into his blanket. Hestared for a while at the leaves overhead, moving in a heraldic wind of theday.

The distance was splintering and blaring with the noise of fighting. There wasin the sound an expression of a deadly persistency, as if it had not began andwas not to cease.

About him were the rows and groups of men that he had dimly seen the previousnight. They were getting a last draught of sleep before the awakening. Thegaunt, careworn features and dusty figures were made plain by this quaint lightat the dawning, but it dressed the skin of the men in corpse-like hues and madethe tangled limbs appear pulseless and dead. The youth started up with a littlecry when his eyes first swept over this motionless mass of men, thick-spreadupon the ground, pallid, and in strange postures. His disordered mindinterpreted the hall of the forest as a charnel place. He believed for aninstant that he was in the house of the dead, and he did not dare to move lestthese corpses start up, squalling and squawking. In a second, however, heachieved his proper mind. He swore a complicated oath at himself. He saw thatthis somber picture was not a fact of the present, but a mere prophecy.

He heard then the noise of a fire crackling briskly in the cold air, and,turning his head, he saw his friend pottering busily about a small blaze. A fewother figures moved in the fog, and he heard the hard cracking of axe blows.

Suddenly there was a hollow rumble of drums. A distant bugle sang faintly.Similar sounds, varying in strength, came from near and far over the forest.The bugles called to each other like brazen gamecocks. The near thunder of theregimental drums rolled.

The body of men in the woods rustled. There was a general uplifting of heads. Amurmuring of voices broke upon the air. In it there was much bass of grumblingoaths. Strange gods were addressed in condemnation of the early hours necessaryto correct war. An officer’s peremptory tenor rang out and quickened thestiffened movement of the men. The tangled limbs unraveled. The corpse-huedfaces were hidden behind fists that twisted slowly in the eye sockets.

The youth sat up and gave vent to an enormous yawn. “Thunder!” heremarked petulantly. He rubbed his eyes, and then putting up his hand feltcarefully the bandage over his wound. His friend, perceiving him to be awake,came from the fire. “Well, Henry, ol’ man, how do yeh feel thismornin’?” he demanded.

The youth yawned again. Then he puckered his mouth to a little pucker. Hishead, in truth, felt precisely like a melon, and there was an unpleasantsensation at his stomach.

“Oh, Lord, I feel pretty bad,” he said.

“Thunder!” exclaimed the other. “I hoped ye’d feel allright this mornin’. Let’s see th’ bandage—I guessit’s slipped.” He began to tinker at the wound in rather a clumsyway until the youth exploded.

“Gosh-dern it!” he said in sharp irritation; “you’rethe hangdest man I ever saw! You wear muffs on your hands. Why in goodthunderation can’t you be more easy? I’d rather you’d standoff an’ throw guns at it. Now, go slow, an’ don’t act as ifyou was nailing down carpet.”

He glared with insolent command at his friend, but the latter answeredsoothingly. “Well, well, come now, an’ git some grub,” hesaid. “Then, maybe, yeh’ll feel better.”

At the fireside the loud young soldier watched over his comrade’s wantswith tenderness and care. He was very busy marshaling the little blackvagabonds of tin cups and pouring into them the streaming iron colored mixturefrom a small and sooty tin pail. He had some fresh meat, which he roastedhurriedly on a stick. He sat down then and contemplated the youth’sappetite with glee.

The youth took note of a remarkable change in his comrade since those days ofcamp life upon the river bank. He seemed no more to be continually regardingthe proportions of his personal prowess. He was not furious at small words thatpricked his conceits. He was no more a loud young soldier. There was about himnow a fine reliance. He showed a quiet belief in his purposes and hisabilities. And this inward confidence evidently enabled him to be indifferentto little words of other men aimed at him.

The youth reflected. He had been used to regarding his comrade as a blatantchild with an audacity grown from his inexperience, thoughtless, headstrong,jealous, and filled with a tinsel courage. A swaggering babe accustomed tostrut in his own dooryard. The youth wondered where had been born these neweyes; when his comrade had made the great discovery that there were many menwho would refuse to be subjected by him. Apparently, the other had now climbeda peak of wisdom from which he could perceive himself as a very wee thing. Andthe youth saw that ever after it would be easier to live in his friend’sneighborhood.

His comrade balanced his ebony coffee-cup on his knee. “Well,Henry,” he said, “what d’yeh think th’ chances are?D’yeh think we’ll wallop ’em?”

The youth considered for a moment. “Day-b’fore-yesterday,” hefinally replied, with boldness, “you would ’a’ betyou’d lick the hull kit-an’-boodle all by yourself.”

His friend looked a trifle amazed. “Would I?” he asked. Hepondered. “Well, perhaps I would,” he decided at last. He staredhumbly at the fire.

The youth was quite disconcerted at this surprising reception of his remarks.“Oh, no, you wouldn’t either,” he said, hastily trying toretrace.

But the other made a deprecating gesture. “Oh, yeh needn’t mind,Henry,” he said. “I believe I was a pretty big fool in thosedays.” He spoke as after a lapse of years.

There was a little pause.

“All th’ officers say we’ve got th’ rebs in a prettytight box,” said the friend, clearing his throat in a commonplace way.“They all seem t’ think we’ve got ’em jest where wewant ’em.”

“I don’t know about that,” the youth replied. “What Iseen over on th’ right makes me think it was th’ other way about.From where I was, it looked as if we was gettin’ a good poundin’yestirday.”

“D’yeh think so?” inquired the friend. “I thought wehandled ’em pretty rough yestirday.”

“Not a bit,” said the youth. “Why, lord, man, youdidn’t see nothing of the fight. Why!” Then a sudden thought cameto him. “Oh! Jim Conklin’s dead.”

His friend started. “What? Is he? Jim Conklin?”

The youth spoke slowly. “Yes. He’s dead. Shot in th’side.”

“Yeh don’t say so. Jim Conklin. . .poor cuss!”

All about them were other small fires surrounded by men with their little blackutensils. From one of these near came sudden sharp voices in a row. It appearedthat two light-footed soldiers had been teasing a huge, bearded man, causinghim to spill coffee upon his blue knees. The man had gone into a rage and hadsworn comprehensively. Stung by his language, his tormentors had immediatelybristled at him with a great show of resenting unjust oaths. Possibly there wasgoing to be a fight.

The friend arose and went over to them, making pacific motions with his arms.“Oh, here, now, boys, what’s th’ use?” he said.“We’ll be at th’ rebs in less’n an hour. What’sth’ good fightin’ ’mong ourselves?”

One of the light-footed soldiers turned upon him red-faced and violent.“Yeh needn’t come around here with yer preachin’. Is’pose yeh don’t approve ’a fightin’ since CharleyMorgan licked yeh; but I don’t see what business this here is ’ayours or anybody else.”

“Well, it ain’t,” said the friend mildly. “Still I hatet’ see—”

There was a tangled argument.

“Well, he—,” said the two, indicating their opponent withaccusative forefingers.

The huge soldier was quite purple with rage. He pointed at the two soldierswith his great hand, extended clawlike. “Well, they—”

But during this argumentative time the desire to deal blows seemed to pass,although they said much to each other. Finally the friend returned to his oldseat. In a short while the three antagonists could be seen together in anamiable bunch.

“Jimmie Rogers ses I’ll have t’ fight him after th’battle t’-day,” announced the friend as he again seated himself.“He ses he don’t allow no interferin’ in his business. I hatet’ see th’ boys fightin’ ’mong themselves.”

The youth laughed. “Yer changed a good bit. Yeh ain’t at all likeyeh was. I remember when you an’ that Irish feller—” Hestopped and laughed again.

“No, I didn’t use t’ be that way,” said his friendthoughtfully. “That’s true ’nough.”

“Well, I didn’t mean—” began the youth.

The friend made another deprecatory gesture. “Oh, yeh needn’t mind,Henry.”

There was another little pause.

“Th’ reg’ment lost over half th’ men yestirday,”remarked the friend eventually. “I thought ’a course they was alldead, but, laws, they kep’ a-comin’ back last night until it seems,after all, we didn’t lose but a few. They’d been scattered allover, wanderin’ around in th’ woods, fightin’ with otherreg’ments, an’ everything. Jest like you done.”

“So?” said the youth.

Chapter XV.

The regiment was standing at order arms at the side of a lane, waiting for thecommand to march, when suddenly the youth remembered the little packetenwrapped in a faded yellow envelope which the loud young soldier withlugubrious words had intrusted to him. It made him start. He uttered anexclamation and turned toward his comrade.

“Wilson!”

“What?”

His friend, at his side in the ranks, was thoughtfully staring down the road.From some cause his expression was at that moment very meek. The youth,regarding him with sidelong glances, felt impelled to change his purpose.“Oh, nothing,” he said.

His friend turned his head in some surprise, “Why, what was yehgoin’ t’ say?”

“Oh, nothing,” repeated the youth.

He resolved not to deal the little blow. It was sufficient that the fact madehim glad. It was not necessary to knock his friend on the head with themisguided packet.

He had been possessed of much fear of his friend, for he saw how easilyquestionings could make holes in his feelings. Lately, he had assured himselfthat the altered comrade would not tantalize him with a persistent curiosity,but he felt certain that during the first period of leisure his friend wouldask him to relate his adventures of the previous day.

He now rejoiced in the possession of a small weapon with which he couldprostrate his comrade at the first signs of a cross-examination. He was master.It would now be he who could laugh and shoot the shafts of derision.

The friend had, in a weak hour, spoken with sobs of his own death. He haddelivered a melancholy oration previous to his funeral, and had doubtless inthe packet of letters, presented various keepsakes to relatives. But he had notdied, and thus he had delivered himself into the hands of the youth.

The latter felt immensely superior to his friend, but he inclined tocondescension. He adopted toward him an air of patronizing good humor.

His self-pride was now entirely restored. In the shade of its flourishinggrowth he stood with braced and self-confident legs, and since nothing couldnow be discovered he did not shrink from an encounter with the eyes of judges,and allowed no thoughts of his own to keep him from an attitude of manfulness.He had performed his mistakes in the dark, so he was still a man.

Indeed, when he remembered his fortunes of yesterday, and looked at them from adistance he began to see something fine there. He had license to be pompous andveteranlike.

His panting agonies of the past he put out of his sight.

In the present, he declared to himself that it was only the doomed and thedamned who roared with sincerity at circumstance. Few but they ever did it. Aman with a full stomach and the respect of his fellows had no business to scoldabout anything that he might think to be wrong in the ways of the universe, oreven with the ways of society. Let the unfortunates rail; the others may playmarbles.

He did not give a great deal of thought to these battles that lay directlybefore him. It was not essential that he should plan his ways in regard tothem. He had been taught that many obligations of a life were easily avoided.The lessons of yesterday had been that retribution was a laggard and blind.With these facts before him he did not deem it necessary that he should becomefeverish over the possibilities of the ensuing twenty-four hours. He couldleave much to chance. Besides, a faith in himself had secretly blossomed. Therewas a little flower of confidence growing within him. He was now a man ofexperience. He had been out among the dragons, he said, and he assured himselfthat they were not so hideous as he had imagined them. Also, they wereinaccurate; they did not sting with precision. A stout heart often defied, anddefying, escaped.

And, furthermore, how could they kill him who was the chosen of gods and doomedto greatness?

He remembered how some of the men had run from the battle. As he recalled theirterror-struck faces he felt a scorn for them. They had surely been more fleetand more wild than was absolutely necessary. They were weak mortals. As forhimself, he had fled with discretion and dignity.

He was aroused from this reverie by his friend, who, having hitched aboutnervously and blinked at the trees for a time, suddenly coughed in anintroductory way, and spoke.

“Fleming!”

“What?”

The friend put his hand up to his mouth and coughed again. He fidgeted in hisjacket.

“Well,” he gulped at last, “I guess yeh might as well give meback them letters.” Dark, prickling blood had flushed into his cheeks andbrow.

“All right, Wilson,” said the youth. He loosened two buttons of hiscoat, thrust in his hand, and brought forth the packet. As he extended it tohis friend the latter’s face was turned from him.

He had been slow in the act of producing the packet because during it he hadbeen trying to invent a remarkable comment on the affair. He could conjure upnothing of sufficient point. He was compelled to allow his friend to escapeunmolested with his packet. And for this he took unto himself considerablecredit. It was a generous thing.

His friend at his side seemed suffering great shame. As he contemplated him,the youth felt his heart grow more strong and stout. He had never beencompelled to blush in such manner for his acts; he was an individual ofextraordinary virtues.

He reflected, with condescending pity: “Too bad! Too bad! The poor devil,it makes him feel tough!”

After this incident, and as he reviewed the battle pictures he had seen, hefelt quite competent to return home and make the hearts of the people glow withstories of war. He could see himself in a room of warm tints telling tales tolisteners. He could exhibit laurels. They were insignificant; still, in adistrict where laurels were infrequent, they might shine.

He saw his gaping audience picturing him as the central figure in blazingscenes. And he imagined the consternation and the ejaculations of his motherand the young lady at the seminary as they drank his recitals. Their vaguefeminine formula for beloved ones doing brave deeds on the field of battlewithout risk of life would be destroyed.

Chapter XVI.

A sputtering of musketry was always to be heard. Later, the cannon had enteredthe dispute. In the fog-filled air their voices made a thudding sound. Thereverberations were continual. This part of the world led a strange, battlefulexistence.

The youth’s regiment was marched to relieve a command that had lain longin some damp trenches. The men took positions behind a curving line of riflepits that had been turned up, like a large furrow, along the line of woods.Before them was a level stretch, peopled with short, deformed stumps. From thewoods beyond came the dull popping of the skirmishers and pickets, firing inthe fog. From the right came the noise of a terrific fracas.

The men cuddled behind the small embankment and sat in easy attitudes awaitingtheir turn. Many had their backs to the firing. The youth’s friend laydown, buried his face in his arms, and almost instantly, it seemed, he was in adeep sleep.

The youth leaned his breast against the brown dirt and peered over at the woodsand up and down the line. Curtains of trees interfered with his ways of vision.He could see the low line of trenches but for a short distance. A few idleflags were perched on the dirt hills. Behind them were rows of dark bodies witha few heads sticking curiously over the top.

Always the noise of skirmishers came from the woods on the front and left, andthe din on the right had grown to frightful proportions. The guns were roaringwithout an instant’s pause for breath. It seemed that the cannon had comefrom all parts and were engaged in a stupendous wrangle. It became impossibleto make a sentence heard.

The youth wished to launch a joke—a quotation from newspapers. He desiredto say, “All quiet on the Rappahannock,” but the guns refused topermit even a comment upon their uproar. He never successfully concluded thesentence. But at last the guns stopped, and among the men in the rifle pitsrumors again flew, like birds, but they were now for the most part blackcreatures who flapped their wings drearily near to the ground and refused torise on any wings of hope. The men’s faces grew doleful from theinterpreting of omens. Tales of hesitation and uncertainty on the part of thosehigh in place and responsibility came to their ears. Stories of disaster wereborne into their minds with many proofs. This din of musketry on the right,growing like a released genie of sound, expressed and emphasized thearmy’s plight.

The men were disheartened and began to mutter. They made gestures expressive ofthe sentence: “Ah, what more can we do?” And it could always beseen that they were bewildered by the alleged news and could not fullycomprehend a defeat.

Before the gray mists had been totally obliterated by the sun rays, theregiment was marching in a spread column that was retiring carefully throughthe woods. The disordered, hurrying lines of the enemy could sometimes be seendown through the groves and little fields. They were yelling, shrill andexultant.

At this sight the youth forgot many personal matters and became greatlyenraged. He exploded in loud sentences. “B’jiminey, we’regeneraled by a lot ’a lunkheads.”

“More than one feller has said that t’-day,” observed a man.

His friend, recently aroused, was still very drowsy. He looked behind him untilhis mind took in the meaning of the movement. Then he sighed. “Oh, well,I s’pose we got licked,” he remarked sadly.

The youth had a thought that it would not be handsome for him to freely condemnother men. He made an attempt to restrain himself, but the words upon histongue were too bitter. He presently began a long and intricate denunciation ofthe commander of the forces.

“Mebbe, it wa’n’t all his fault—not all together. Hedid th’ best he knowed. It’s our luck t’ git lickedoften,” said his friend in a weary tone. He was trudging along withstooped shoulders and shifting eyes like a man who has been caned and kicked.

“Well, don’t we fight like the devil? Don’t we do all thatmen can?” demanded the youth loudly.

He was secretly dumfounded at this sentiment when it came from his lips. For amoment his face lost its valor and he looked guiltily about him. But no onequestioned his right to deal in such words, and presently he recovered his airof courage. He went on to repeat a statement he had heard going from group togroup at the camp that morning. “The brigadier said he never saw a newreg’ment fight the way we fought yestirday, didn’t he? And wedidn’t do better than many another reg’ment, did we? Well, then,you can’t say it’s th’ army’s fault, can you?”

In his reply, the friend’s voice was stern. “’A coursenot,” he said. “No man dare say we don’t fight like th’devil. No man will ever dare say it. Th’ boys fight like hell-roosters.But still—still, we don’t have no luck.”

“Well, then, if we fight like the devil an’ don’t ever whip,it must be the general’s fault,” said the youth grandly anddecisively. “And I don’t see any sense in fighting and fighting andfighting, yet always losing through some derned old lunkhead of ageneral.”

A sarcastic man who was tramping at the youth’s side, then spoke lazily.“Mebbe yeh think yeh fit th’ hull battle yestirday, Fleming,”he remarked.

The speech pierced the youth. Inwardly he was reduced to an abject pulp bythese chance words. His legs quaked privately. He cast a frightened glance atthe sarcastic man.

“Why, no,” he hastened to say in a conciliating voice “Idon’t think I fought the whole battle yesterday.”

But the other seemed innocent of any deeper meaning. Apparently, he had noinformation. It was merely his habit. “Oh!” he replied in the sametone of calm derision.

The youth, nevertheless, felt a threat. His mind shrank from going near to thedanger, and thereafter he was silent. The significance of the sarcasticman’s words took from him all loud moods that would make him appearprominent. He became suddenly a modest person.

There was low-toned talk among the troops. The officers were impatient andsnappy, their countenances clouded with the tales of misfortune. The troops,sifting through the forest, were sullen. In the youth’s company once aman’s laugh rang out. A dozen soldiers turned their faces quickly towardhim and frowned with vague displeasure.

The noise of firing dogged their footsteps. Sometimes, it seemed to be driven alittle way, but it always returned again with increased insolence. The menmuttered and cursed, throwing black looks in its direction.

In a clear space the troops were at last halted. Regiments and brigades, brokenand detached through their encounters with thickets, grew together again andlines were faced toward the pursuing bark of the enemy’s infantry.

This noise, following like the yelpings of eager, metallic hounds, increased toa loud and joyous burst, and then, as the sun went serenely up the sky,throwing illuminating rays into the gloomy thickets, it broke forth intoprolonged pealings. The woods began to crackle as if afire.

“Whoop-a-dadee,” said a man, “here we are! Everybodyfightin’. Blood an’ destruction.”

“I was willin’ t’ bet they’d attack as soon asth’ sun got fairly up,” savagely asserted the lieutenant whocommanded the youth’s company. He jerked without mercy at his littlemustache. He strode to and fro with dark dignity in the rear of his men, whowere lying down behind whatever protection they had collected.

A battery had trundled into position in the rear and was thoughtfully shellingthe distance. The regiment, unmolested as yet, awaited the moment when the grayshadows of the woods before them should be slashed by the lines of flame. Therewas much growling and swearing.

“Good Gawd,” the youth grumbled, “we’re always beingchased around like rats! It makes me sick. Nobody seems to know where we go orwhy we go. We just get fired around from pillar to post and get licked here andget licked there, and nobody knows what it’s done for. It makes a manfeel like a damn’ kitten in a bag. Now, I’d like to know what theeternal thunders we was marched into these woods for anyhow, unless it was togive the rebs a regular pot shot at us. We came in here and got our legs alltangled up in these cussed briers, and then we begin to fight and the rebs hadan easy time of it. Don’t tell me it’s just luck! I know better.It’s this derned old—”

The friend seemed jaded, but he interrupted his comrade with a voice of calmconfidence. “It’ll turn out all right in th’ end,” hesaid.

“Oh, the devil it will! You always talk like a dog-hanged parson.Don’t tell me! I know—”

At this time there was an interposition by the savage-minded lieutenant, whowas obliged to vent some of his inward dissatisfaction upon his men. “Youboys shut right up! There no need ’a your wastin’ your breath inlong-winded arguments about this an’ that an’ th’ other.You’ve been jawin’ like a lot ’a old hens. All you’vegot t’ do is to fight, an’ you’ll get plenty ’a thatt’ do in about ten minutes. Less talkin’ an’ morefightin’ is what’s best for you boys. I never saw sech gabblingjackasses.”

He paused, ready to pounce upon any man who might have the temerity to reply.No words being said, he resumed his dignified pacing.

“There’s too much chin music an’ too little fightin’ inthis war, anyhow,” he said to them, turning his head for a final remark.

The day had grown more white, until the sun shed his full radiance upon thethronged forest. A sort of a gust of battle came sweeping toward that part ofthe line where lay the youth’s regiment. The front shifted a trifle tomeet it squarely. There was a wait. In this part of the field there passedslowly the intense moments that precede the tempest.

A single rifle flashed in a thicket before the regiment. In an instant it wasjoined by many others. There was a mighty song of clashes and crashes that wentsweeping through the woods. The guns in the rear, aroused and enraged by shellsthat had been thrown burr-like at them, suddenly involved themselves in ahideous altercation with another band of guns. The battle roar settled to arolling thunder, which was a single, long explosion.

In the regiment there was a peculiar kind of hesitation denoted in theattitudes of the men. They were worn, exhausted, having slept but little andlabored much. They rolled their eyes toward the advancing battle as they stoodawaiting the shock. Some shrank and flinched. They stood as men tied to stakes.

Chapter XVII.

This advance of the enemy had seemed to the youth like a ruthless hunting. Hebegan to fume with rage and exasperation. He beat his foot upon the ground, andscowled with hate at the swirling smoke that was approaching like a phantomflood. There was a maddening quality in this seeming resolution of the foe togive him no rest, to give him no time to sit down and think. Yesterday he hadfought and had fled rapidly. There had been many adventures. For to-day he feltthat he had earned opportunities for contemplative repose. He could haveenjoyed portraying to uninitiated listeners various scenes at which he had beena witness or ably discussing the processes of war with other proved men. Too itwas important that he should have time for physical recuperation. He was soreand stiff from his experiences. He had received his fill of all exertions, andhe wished to rest.

But those other men seemed never to grow weary; they were fighting with theirold speed. He had a wild hate for the relentless foe. Yesterday, when he hadimagined the universe to be against him, he had hated it, little gods and biggods; to-day he hated the army of the foe with the same great hatred. He wasnot going to be badgered of his life, like a kitten chased by boys, he said. Itwas not well to drive men into final corners; at those moments they could alldevelop teeth and claws.

He leaned and spoke into his friend’s ear. He menaced the woods with agesture. “If they keep on chasing us, by Gawd, they’d better watchout. Can’t stand toomuch.”

The friend twisted his head and made a calm reply. “If they keep ona-chasin’ us they’ll drive us all inteh th’ river.”

The youth cried out savagely at this statement. He crouched behind a littletree, with his eyes burning hatefully and his teeth set in a cur-like snarl. Theawkward bandage was still about his head, and upon it, over his wound, therewas a spot of dry blood. His hair was wondrously tousled, and some straggling,moving locks hung over the cloth of the bandage down toward his forehead. Hisjacket and shirt were open at the throat, and exposed his young bronzed neck.There could be seen spasmodic gulpings at his throat.

His fingers twined nervously about his rifle. He wished that it was an engineof annihilating power. He felt that he and his companions were being tauntedand derided from sincere convictions that they were poor and puny. Hisknowledge of his inability to take vengeance for it made his rage into a darkand stormy specter, that possessed him and made him dream of abominablecruelties. The tormentors were flies sucking insolently at his blood, and hethought that he would have given his life for a revenge of seeing their facesin pitiful plights.

The winds of battle had swept all about the regiment, until the one rifle,instantly followed by others, flashed in its front. A moment later the regimentroared forth its sudden and valiant retort. A dense wall of smoke settled down.It was furiously slit and slashed by the knifelike fire from the rifles.

To the youth the fighters resembled animals tossed for a death struggle into adark pit. There was a sensation that he and his fellows, at bay, were pushingback, always pushing fierce onslaughts of creatures who were slippery. Theirbeams of crimson seemed to get no purchase upon the bodies of their foes; thelatter seemed to evade them with ease, and come through, between, around, andabout with unopposed skill.

When, in a dream, it occurred to the youth that his rifle was an impotentstick, he lost sense of everything but his hate, his desire to smash into pulpthe glittering smile of victory which he could feel upon the faces of hisenemies.

The blue smoke-swallowed line curled and writhed like a snake stepped upon. Itswung its ends to and fro in an agony of fear and rage.

The youth was not conscious that he was erect upon his feet. He did not knowthe direction of the ground. Indeed, once he even lost the habit of balance andfell heavily. He was up again immediately. One thought went through the chaosof his brain at the time. He wondered if he had fallen because he had beenshot. But the suspicion flew away at once. He did not think more of it.

He had taken up a first position behind the little tree, with a directdetermination to hold it against the world. He had not deemed it possible thathis army could that day succeed, and from this he felt the ability to fightharder. But the throng had surged in all ways, until he lost directions andlocations, save that he knew where lay the enemy.

The flames bit him, and the hot smoke broiled his skin. His rifle barrel grewso hot that ordinarily he could not have borne it upon his palms; but he kepton stuffing cartridges into it, and pounding them with his clanking, bendingramrod. If he aimed at some changing form through the smoke, he pulled thetrigger with a fierce grunt, as if he were dealing a blow of the fist with allhis strength.

When the enemy seemed falling back before him and his fellows, he wentinstantly forward, like a dog who, seeing his foes lagging, turns and insistsupon being pursued. And when he was compelled to retire again, he did itslowly, sullenly, taking steps of wrathful despair.

Once he, in his intent hate, was almost alone, and was firing, when all thosenear him had ceased. He was so engrossed in his occupation that he was notaware of a lull.

He was recalled by a hoarse laugh and a sentence that came to his ears in avoice of contempt and amazement. “Yeh infernal fool, don’t yeh knowenough t’ quit when there ain’t anything t’ shoot at? GoodGawd!”

He turned then and, pausing with his rifle thrown half into position, looked atthe blue line of his comrades. During this moment of leisure they seemed all tobe engaged in staring with astonishment at him. They had become spectators.Turning to the front again he saw, under the lifted smoke, a deserted ground.

He looked bewildered for a moment. Then there appeared upon the glazed vacancyof his eyes a diamond point of intelligence. “Oh,” he said,comprehending.

He returned to his comrades and threw himself upon the ground. He sprawled likea man who had been thrashed. His flesh seemed strangely on fire, and the soundsof the battle continued in his ears. He groped blindly for his canteen.

The lieutenant was crowing. He seemed drunk with fighting. He called out to theyouth: “By heavens, if I had ten thousand wild cats like you I could tearth’ stomach outa this war in less’n a week!” He puffed outhis chest with large dignity as he said it.

Some of the men muttered and looked at the youth in awestruck ways. It wasplain that as he had gone on loading and firing and cursing without properintermission, they had found time to regard him. And they now looked upon himas a war devil.

The friend came staggering to him. There was some fright and dismay in hisvoice. “Are yeh all right, Fleming? Do yeh feel all right? Thereain’t nothin’ th’ matter with yeh, Henry, is there?”

“No,” said the youth with difficulty. His throat seemed full ofknobs and burrs.

These incidents made the youth ponder. It was revealed to him that he had beena barbarian, a beast. He had fought like a pagan who defends his religion.Regarding it, he saw that it was fine, wild, and, in some ways, easy. He hadbeen a tremendous figure, no doubt. By this struggle he had overcome obstacleswhich he had admitted to be mountains. They had fallen like paper peaks, and hewas now what he called a hero. And he had not been aware of the process. He hadslept, and, awakening, found himself a knight.

He lay and basked in the occasional stares of his comrades. Their faces werevaried in degrees of blackness from the burned powder. Some were utterlysmudged. They were reeking with perspiration, and their breaths came hard andwheezing. And from these soiled expanses they peered at him.

“Hot work! Hot work!” cried the lieutenant deliriously. He walkedup and down, restless and eager. Sometimes his voice could be heard in a wild,incomprehensible laugh.

When he had a particularly profound thought upon the science of war he alwaysunconsciously addressed himself to the youth.

There was some grim rejoicing by the men. “By thunder, I bet thisarmy’ll never see another new reg’ment like us!”

“You bet!”

“A dog, a woman, an’ a walnut tree
Th’ more yeh beat ’em, th’ better they be!

That’s like us.”

“Lost a piler men, they did. If an ol’ woman swep’ upth’ woods she’d git a dustpanful.”

“Yes, an’ if she’ll come around ag’in in ’bout anhour she’ll get a pile more.”

The forest still bore its burden of clamor. From off under the trees came therolling clatter of the musketry. Each distant thicket seemed a strangeporcupine with quills of flame. A cloud of dark smoke, as from smolderingruins, went up toward the sun now bright and gay in the blue, enameled sky.

Chapter XVIII.

The ragged line had respite for some minutes, but during its pause the strugglein the forest became magnified until the trees seemed to quiver from the firingand the ground to shake from the rushing of men. The voices of the cannon weremingled in a long and interminable row. It seemed difficult to live in such anatmosphere. The chests of the men strained for a bit of freshness, and theirthroats craved water.

There was one shot through the body, who raised a cry of bitter lamentationwhen came this lull. Perhaps he had been calling out during the fighting also,but at that time no one had heard him. But now the men turned at the woefulcomplaints of him upon the ground.

“Who is it? Who is it?”

“Its Jimmie Rogers. Jimmie Rogers.”

When their eyes first encountered him there was a sudden halt, as if theyfeared to go near. He was thrashing about in the grass, twisting his shudderingbody into many strange postures. He was screaming loudly. This instant’shesitation seemed to fill him with a tremendous, fantastic contempt, and hedamned them in shrieked sentences.

The youth’s friend had a geographical illusion concerning a stream, andhe obtained permission to go for some water. Immediately canteens were showeredupon him. “Fill mine, will yeh?” “Bring me some, too.”“And me, too.” He departed, ladened. The youth went with hisfriend, feeling a desire to throw his heated body into the stream and, soakingthere, drink quarts.

They made a hurried search for the supposed stream, but did not find it.“No water here,” said the youth. They turned without delay andbegan to retrace their steps.

From their position as they again faced toward the place of the fighting, theycould comprehend a greater amount of the battle than when their visions hadbeen blurred by the hurling smoke of the line. They could see dark stretcheswinding along the land, and on one cleared space there was a row of guns makinggray clouds, which were filled with large flashes of orange-colored flame. Oversome foliage they could see the roof of a house. One window, glowing a deepmurder red, shone squarely through the leaves. From the edifice a tall leaningtower of smoke went far into the sky.

Looking over their own troops, they saw mixed masses slowly getting intoregular form. The sunlight made twinkling points of the bright steel. To therear there was a glimpse of a distant roadway as it curved over a slope. It wascrowded with retreating infantry. From all the interwoven forest arose thesmoke and bluster of the battle. The air was always occupied by a blaring.

Near where they stood shells were flip-flapping and hooting. Occasional bulletsbuzzed in the air and spanged into tree trunks. Wounded men and otherstragglers were slinking through the woods.

Looking down an aisle of the grove, the youth and his companion saw a janglinggeneral and his staff almost ride upon a wounded man, who was crawling on hishands and knees. The general reined strongly at his charger’s opened andfoamy mouth and guided it with dexterous horsemanship past the man. The latterscrambled in wild and torturing haste. His strength evidently failed him as hereached a place of safety. One of his arms suddenly weakened, and he fell,sliding over upon his back. He lay stretched out, breathing gently.

A moment later the small, creaking cavalcade was directly in front of the twosoldiers. Another officer, riding with the skillful abandon of a cowboy,galloped his horse to a position directly before the general. The two unnoticedfoot soldiers made a little show of going on, but they lingered near in thedesire to overhear the conversation. Perhaps, they thought, some great innerhistorical things would be said.

The general, whom the boys knew as the commander of their division, looked atthe other officer and spoke coolly, as if he were criticising his clothes.“Th’ enemy’s formin’ over there for anothercharge,” he said. “It’ll be directed against Whiterside,an’ I fear they’ll break through unless we work like thundert’ stop them.”

The other swore at his restive horse, and then cleared his throat. He made agesture toward his cap. “It’ll be hell t’ pay stoppin’them,” he said shortly.

“I presume so,” remarked the general. Then he began to talk rapidlyand in a lower tone. He frequently illustrated his words with a pointingfinger. The two infantrymen could hear nothing until finally he asked:“What troops can you spare?”

The officer who rode like a cowboy reflected for an instant.“Well,” he said, “I had to order in th’ 12th to helpth’ 76th, an’ I haven’t really got any. But there’sth’ 304th. They fight like a lot ’a mule drivers. I can spare thembest of any.”

The youth and his friend exchanged glances of astonishment.

The general spoke sharply. “Get ’em ready, then. I’ll watchdevelopments from here, an’ send you word when t’ start them.It’ll happen in five minutes.”

As the other officer tossed his fingers toward his cap and wheeling his horse,started away, the general called out to him in a sober voice: “Idon’t believe many of your mule drivers will get back.”

The other shouted something in reply. He smiled.

With scared faces, the youth and his companion hurried back to the line.

These happenings had occupied an incredibly short time, yet the youth felt thatin them he had been made aged. New eyes were given to him. And the moststartling thing was to learn suddenly that he was very insignificant. Theofficer spoke of the regiment as if he referred to a broom. Some part of thewoods needed sweeping, perhaps, and he merely indicated a broom in a toneproperly indifferent to its fate. It was war, no doubt, but it appearedstrange.

As the two boys approached the line, the lieutenant perceived them and swelledwith wrath. “Fleming—Wilson—how long does it take yeh to gitwater, anyhow—where yeh been to.”

But his oration ceased as he saw their eyes, which were large with great tales.“We’re goin’ t’ charge—we’re goin’t’ charge!” cried the youth’s friend, hastening with hisnews.

“Charge?” said the lieutenant. “Charge? Well, b’Gawd!Now, this is real fightin’.” Over his soiled countenance there wenta boastful smile. “Charge? Well, b’Gawd!”

A little group of soldiers surrounded the two youths. “Are we, sure’nough? Well, I’ll be derned! Charge? What fer? What at? Wilson,you’re lyin’.”

“I hope to die,” said the youth, pitching his tones to the key ofangry remonstrance. “Sure as shooting, I tell you.”

And his friend spoke in re-enforcement. “Not by a blame sight, heain’t lyin’. We heard ’em talkin’.”

They caught sight of two mounted figures a short distance from them. One wasthe colonel of the regiment and the other was the officer who had receivedorders from the commander of the division. They were gesticulating at eachother. The soldier, pointing at them, interpreted the scene.

One man had a final objection: “How could yeh hear ’emtalkin’?” But the men, for a large part, nodded, admitting thatpreviously the two friends had spoken truth.

They settled back into reposeful attitudes with airs of having accepted thematter. And they mused upon it, with a hundred varieties of expression. It wasan engrossing thing to think about. Many tightened their belts carefully andhitched at their trousers.

A moment later the officers began to bustle among the men, pushing them into amore compact mass and into a better alignment. They chased those that straggledand fumed at a few men who seemed to show by their attitudes that they haddecided to remain at that spot. They were like critical shepherds, strugglingwith sheep.

Presently, the regiment seemed to draw itself up and heave a deep breath. Noneof the men’s faces were mirrors of large thoughts. The soldiers werebended and stooped like sprinters before a signal. Many pairs of glinting eyespeered from the grimy faces toward the curtains of the deeper woods. Theyseemed to be engaged in deep calculations of time and distance.

They were surrounded by the noises of the monstrous altercation between the twoarmies. The world was fully interested in other matters. Apparently, theregiment had its small affair to itself.

The youth, turning, shot a quick, inquiring glance at his friend. The latterreturned to him the same manner of look. They were the only ones who possessedan inner knowledge. “Mule drivers—hell t’pay—don’t believe many will get back.” It was an ironicalsecret. Still, they saw no hesitation in each other’s faces, and theynodded a mute and unprotesting assent when a shaggy man near them said in ameek voice: “We’ll git swallowed.”

Chapter XIX.

The youth stared at the land in front of him. Its foliages now seemed to veilpowers and horrors. He was unaware of the machinery of orders that started thecharge, although from the corners of his eyes he saw an officer, who lookedlike a boy a-horseback, come galloping, waving his hat. Suddenly he felt astraining and heaving among the men. The line fell slowly forward like atoppling wall, and, with a convulsive gasp that was intended for a cheer, theregiment began its journey. The youth was pushed and jostled for a momentbefore he understood the movement at all, but directly he lunged ahead andbegan to run.

He fixed his eye upon a distant and prominent clump of trees where he hadconcluded the enemy were to be met, and he ran toward it as toward a goal. Hehad believed throughout that it was a mere question of getting over anunpleasant matter as quickly as possible, and he ran desperately, as if pursuedfor a murder. His face was drawn hard and tight with the stress of hisendeavor. His eyes were fixed in a lurid glare. And with his soiled anddisordered dress, his red and inflamed features surmounted by the dingy ragwith its spot of blood, his wildly swinging rifle, and banging accouterments,he looked to be an insane soldier.

As the regiment swung from its position out into a cleared space the woods andthickets before it awakened. Yellow flames leaped toward it from manydirections. The forest made a tremendous objection.

The line lurched straight for a moment. Then the right wing swung forward; itin turn was surpassed by the left. Afterward the center careered to the frontuntil the regiment was a wedge-shaped mass, but an instant later the oppositionof the bushes, trees, and uneven places on the ground split the command andscattered it into detached clusters.

The youth, light-footed, was unconsciously in advance. His eyes still kept noteof the clump of trees. From all places near it the clannish yell of the enemycould be heard. The little flames of rifles leaped from it. The song of thebullets was in the air and shells snarled among the treetops. One tumbleddirectly into the middle of a hurrying group and exploded in crimson fury.There was an instant spectacle of a man, almost over it, throwing up his handsto shield his eyes.

Other men, punched by bullets, fell in grotesque agonies. The regiment left acoherent trail of bodies.

They had passed into a clearer atmosphere. There was an effect like arevelation in the new appearance of the landscape. Some men working madly at abattery were plain to them, and the opposing infantry’s lines weredefined by the gray walls and fringes of smoke.

It seemed to the youth that he saw everything. Each blade of the green grasswas bold and clear. He thought that he was aware of every change in the thin,transparent vapor that floated idly in sheets. The brown or gray trunks of thetrees showed each roughness of their surfaces. And the men of the regiment,with their starting eyes and sweating faces, running madly, or falling, as ifthrown headlong, to queer, heaped-up corpses—all were comprehended. Hismind took a mechanical but firm impression, so that afterward everything waspictured and explained to him, save why he himself was there.

But there was a frenzy made from this furious rush. The men, pitching forwardinsanely, had burst into cheerings, moblike and barbaric, but tuned in strangekeys that can arouse the dullard and the stoic. It made a mad enthusiasm that,it seemed, would be incapable of checking itself before granite and brass.There was the delirium that encounters despair and death, and is heedless andblind to the odds. It is a temporary but sublime absence of selfishness. Andbecause it was of this order was the reason, perhaps, why the youth wondered,afterward, what reasons he could have had for being there.

Presently the straining pace ate up the energies of the men. As if byagreement, the leaders began to slacken their speed. The volleys directedagainst them had had a seeming windlike effect. The regiment snorted and blew.Among some stolid trees it began to falter and hesitate. The men, staringintently, began to wait for some of the distant walls of smoke to move anddisclose to them the scene. Since much of their strength and their breath hadvanished, they returned to caution. They were become men again.

The youth had a vague belief that he had run miles, and he thought, in a way,that he was now in some new and unknown land.

The moment the regiment ceased its advance the protesting splutter of musketrybecame a steadied roar. Long and accurate fringes of smoke spread out. From thetop of a small hill came level belchings of yellow flame that caused an inhumanwhistling in the air.

The men, halted, had opportunity to see some of their comrades dropping withmoans and shrieks. A few lay under foot, still or wailing. And now for aninstant the men stood, their rifles slack in their hands, and watched theregiment dwindle. They appeared dazed and stupid. This spectacle seemed toparalyze them, overcome them with a fatal fascination. They stared woodenly atthe sights, and, lowering their eyes, looked from face to face. It was astrange pause, and a strange silence.

Then, above the sounds of the outside commotion, arose the roar of thelieutenant. He strode suddenly forth, his infantile features black with rage.

“Come on, yeh fools!” he bellowed. “Come on! Yeh can’tstay here. Yeh must come on.” He said more, but much of it could not beunderstood.

He started rapidly forward, with his head turned toward the men, “Comeon,” he was shouting. The men stared with blank and yokel-like eyes athim. He was obliged to halt and retrace his steps. He stood then with his backto the enemy and delivered gigantic curses into the faces of the men. His bodyvibrated from the weight and force of his imprecations. And he could stringoaths with the facility of a maiden who strings beads.

The friend of the youth aroused. Lurching suddenly forward and dropping to hisknees, he fired an angry shot at the persistent woods. This action awakened themen. They huddled no more like sheep. They seemed suddenly to bethinkthemselves of their weapons, and at once commenced firing. Belabored by theirofficers, they began to move forward. The regiment, involved like a cartinvolved in mud and muddle, started unevenly with many jolts and jerks. The menstopped now every few paces to fire and load, and in this manner moved slowlyon from trees to trees.

The flaming opposition in their front grew with their advance until it seemedthat all forward ways were barred by the thin leaping tongues, and off to theright an ominous demonstration could sometimes be dimly discerned. The smokelately generated was in confusing clouds that made it difficult for theregiment to proceed with intelligence. As he passed through each curling massthe youth wondered what would confront him on the farther side.

The command went painfully forward until an open space interposed between themand the lurid lines. Here, crouching and cowering behind some trees, the menclung with desperation, as if threatened by a wave. They looked wild-eyed, andas if amazed at this furious disturbance they had stirred. In the storm therewas an ironical expression of their importance. The faces of the men, too,showed a lack of a certain feeling of responsibility for being there. It was asif they had been driven. It was the dominant animal failing to remember in thesupreme moments the forceful causes of various superficial qualities. The wholeaffair seemed incomprehensible to many of them.

As they halted thus the lieutenant again began to bellow profanely. Regardlessof the vindictive threats of the bullets, he went about coaxing, berating, andbedamning. His lips, that were habitually in a soft and childlike curve, werenow writhed into unholy contortions. He swore by all possible deities.

Once he grabbed the youth by the arm. “Come on, yeh lunkhead!” heroared. “Come on! We’ll all git killed if we stay here. We’veon’y got t’ go across that lot. An’ then”—theremainder of his idea disappeared in a blue haze of curses.

The youth stretched forth his arm. “Cross there?” His mouth waspuckered in doubt and awe.

“Certainly. Jest ’cross th’ lot! We can’t stayhere,” screamed the lieutenant. He poked his face close to the youth andwaved his bandaged hand. “Come on!” Presently he grappled with himas if for a wrestling bout. It was as if he planned to drag the youth by theear on to the assault.

The private felt a sudden unspeakable indignation against his officer. Hewrenched fiercely and shook him off.

“Come on yerself, then,” he yelled. There was a bitter challenge inhis voice.

They galloped together down the regimental front. The friend scrambled afterthem. In front of the colors the three men began to bawl: “Come on! comeon!” They danced and gyrated like tortured savages.

The flag, obedient to these appeals, bended its glittering form and swepttoward them. The men wavered in indecision for a moment, and then with a long,wailful cry the dilapidated regiment surged forward and began its new journey.

Over the field went the scurrying mass. It was a handful of men splattered intothe faces of the enemy. Toward it instantly sprang the yellow tongues. A vastquantity of blue smoke hung before them. A mighty banging made ears valueless.

The youth ran like a madman to reach the woods before a bullet could discoverhim. He ducked his head low, like a football player. In his haste his eyesalmost closed, and the scene was a wild blur. Pulsating saliva stood at thecorners of his mouth.

Within him, as he hurled himself forward, was born a love, a despairingfondness for this flag which was near him. It was a creation of beauty andinvulnerability. It was a goddess, radiant, that bended its form with animperious gesture to him. It was a woman, red and white, hating and loving,that called him with the voice of his hopes. Because no harm could come to ithe endowed it with power. He kept near, as if it could be a saver of lives, andan imploring cry went from his mind.

In the mad scramble he was aware that the color sergeant flinched suddenly, asif struck by a bludgeon. He faltered, and then became motionless, save for hisquivering knees. He made a spring and a clutch at the pole. At the same instanthis friend grabbed it from the other side. They jerked at it, stout andfurious, but the color sergeant was dead, and the corpse would not relinquishits trust. For a moment there was a grim encounter. The dead man, swinging withbended back, seemed to be obstinately tugging, in ludicrous and awful ways, forthe possession of the flag.

It was past in an instant of time. They wrenched the flag furiously from thedead man, and, as they turned again, the corpse swayed forward with bowed head.One arm swung high, and the curved hand fell with heavy protest on thefriend’s unheeding shoulder.

Chapter XX.

When the two youths turned with the flag they saw that much of the regiment hadcrumbled away, and the dejected remnant was coming slowly back. The men, havinghurled themselves in projectile fashion, had presently expended their forces.They slowly retreated, with their faces still toward the spluttering woods, andtheir hot rifles still replying to the din. Several officers were givingorders, their voices keyed to screams.

“Where in hell yeh goin’?” the lieutenant was asking in asarcastic howl. And a red-bearded officer, whose voice of triple brass couldplainly be heard, was commanding: “Shoot into ’em! Shoot into’em, Gawd damn their souls!” There was a meléeof screeches,in which the men were ordered to do conflicting and impossible things.

The youth and his friend had a small scuffle over the flag. “Give itt’ me!” “No, let me keep it!” Each felt satisfied withthe other’s possession of it, but each felt bound to declare, by an offerto carry the emblem, his willingness to further risk himself. The youth roughlypushed his friend away.

The regiment fell back to the stolid trees. There it halted for a moment toblaze at some dark forms that had begun to steal upon its track. Presently itresumed its march again, curving among the tree trunks. By the time thedepleted regiment had again reached the first open space they were receiving afast and merciless fire. There seemed to be mobs all about them.

The greater part of the men, discouraged, their spirits worn by the turmoil,acted as if stunned. They accepted the pelting of the bullets with bowed andweary heads. It was of no purpose to strive against walls. It was of no use tobatter themselves against granite. And from this consciousness that they hadattempted to conquer an unconquerable thing there seemed to arise a feelingthat they had been betrayed. They glowered with bent brows, but dangerously,upon some of the officers, more particularly upon the red-bearded one with thevoice of triple brass.

However, the rear of the regiment was fringed with men, who continued to shootirritably at the advancing foes. They seemed resolved to make every trouble.The youthful lieutenant was perhaps the last man in the disordered mass. Hisforgotten back was toward the enemy. He had been shot in the arm. It hungstraight and rigid. Occasionally he would cease to remember it, and be about toemphasize an oath with a sweeping gesture. The multiplied pain caused him toswear with incredible power.

The youth went along with slipping uncertain feet. He kept watchful eyesrearward. A scowl of mortification and rage was upon his face. He had thoughtof a fine revenge upon the officer who had referred to him and his fellows asmule drivers. But he saw that it could not come to pass. His dreams hadcollapsed when the mule drivers, dwindling rapidly, had wavered and hesitatedon the little clearing, and then had recoiled. And now the retreat of the muledrivers was a march of shame to him.

A dagger-pointed gaze from without his blackened face was held toward theenemy, but his greater hatred was riveted upon the man, who, not knowing him,had called him a mule driver.

When he knew that he and his comrades had failed to do anything in successfulways that might bring the little pangs of a kind of remorse upon the officer,the youth allowed the rage of the baffled to possess him. This cold officerupon a monument, who dropped epithets unconcernedly down, would be finer as adead man, he thought. So grievous did he think it that he could never possessthe secret right to taunt truly in answer.

He had pictured red letters of curious revenge. “We aremuledrivers, are we?” And now he was compelled to throw them away.

He presently wrapped his heart in the cloak of his pride and kept the flagerect. He harangued his fellows, pushing against their chests with his freehand. To those he knew well he made frantic appeals, beseeching them by name.Between him and the lieutenant, scolding and near to losing his mind with rage,there was felt a subtle fellowship and equality. They supported each other inall manner of hoarse, howling protests.

But the regiment was a machine run down. The two men babbled at a forcelessthing. The soldiers who had heart to go slowly were continually shaken in theirresolves by a knowledge that comrades were slipping with speed back to thelines. It was difficult to think of reputation when others were thinking ofskins. Wounded men were left crying on this black journey.

The smoke fringes and flames blustered always. The youth, peering once througha sudden rift in a cloud, saw a brown mass of troops, interwoven and magnifieduntil they appeared to be thousands. A fierce-hued flag flashed before hisvision.

Immediately, as if the uplifting of the smoke had been prearranged, thediscovered troops burst into a rasping yell, and a hundred flames jetted towardthe retreating band. A rolling gray cloud again interposed as the regimentdoggedly replied. The youth had to depend again upon his misused ears, whichwere trembling and buzzing from the meléeof musketry and yells.

The way seemed eternal. In the clouded haze men became panic-stricken with thethought that the regiment had lost its path, and was proceeding in a perilousdirection. Once the men who headed the wild procession turned and came pushingback against their comrades, screaming that they were being fired upon frompoints which they had considered to be toward their own lines. At this cry ahysterical fear and dismay beset the troops. A soldier, who heretofore had beenambitious to make the regiment into a wise little band that would proceedcalmly amid the huge-appearing difficulties, suddenly sank down and buried hisface in his arms with an air of bowing to a doom. From another a shrilllamentation rang out filled with profane allusions to a general. Men ran hitherand thither, seeking with their eyes roads of escape. With serene regularity,as if controlled by a schedule, bullets buffed into men.

The youth walked stolidly into the midst of the mob, and with his flag in hishands took a stand as if he expected an attempt to push him to the ground. Heunconsciously assumed the attitude of the color bearer in the fight of thepreceding day. He passed over his brow a hand that trembled. His breath did notcome freely. He was choking during this small wait for the crisis.

His friend came to him. “Well, Henry, I guess this isgood-by—John.”

“Oh, shut up, you damned fool!” replied the youth, and he would notlook at the other.

The officers labored like politicians to beat the mass into a proper circle toface the menaces. The ground was uneven and torn. The men curled intodepressions and fitted themselves snugly behind whatever would frustrate abullet. The youth noted with vague surprise that the lieutenant was standingmutely with his legs far apart and his sword held in the manner of a cane. Theyouth wondered what had happened to his vocal organs that he no more cursed.

There was something curious in this little intent pause of the lieutenant. Hewas like a babe which, having wept its fill, raises its eyes and fixes upon adistant toy. He was engrossed in this contemplation, and the soft under lipquivered from self-whispered words.

Some lazy and ignorant smoke curled slowly. The men, hiding from the bullets,waited anxiously for it to lift and disclose the plight of the regiment.

The silent ranks were suddenly thrilled by the eager voice of the youthfullieutenant bawling out: “Here they come! Right onto us,b’Gawd!” His further words were lost in a roar of wicked thunderfrom the men’s rifles.

The youth’s eyes had instantly turned in the direction indicated by theawakened and agitated lieutenant, and he had seen the haze of treacherydisclosing a body of soldiers of the enemy. They were so near that he could seetheir features. There was a recognition as he looked at the types of faces.Also he perceived with dim amazement that their uniforms were rather gay ineffect, being light gray, accented with a brilliant-hued facing. Too, theclothes seemed new.

These troops had apparently been going forward with caution, their rifles heldin readiness, when the youthful lieutenant had discovered them and theirmovement had been interrupted by the volley from the blue regiment. From themoment’s glimpse, it was derived that they had been unaware of theproximity of their dark-suited foes or had mistaken the direction. Almostinstantly they were shut utterly from the youth’s sight by the smoke fromthe energetic rifles of his companions. He strained his vision to learn theaccomplishment of the volley, but the smoke hung before him.

The two bodies of troops exchanged blows in the manner of a pair of boxers. Thefast angry firings went back and forth. The men in blue were intent with thedespair of their circumstances and they seized upon the revenge to be had atclose range. Their thunder swelled loud and valiant. Their curving frontbristled with flashes and the place resounded with the clangor of theirramrods. The youth ducked and dodged for a time and achieved a fewunsatisfactory views of the enemy. There appeared to be many of them and theywere replying swiftly. They seemed moving toward the blue regiment, step bystep. He seated himself gloomily on the ground with his flag between his knees.

As he noted the vicious, wolflike temper of his comrades he had a sweet thoughtthat if the enemy was about to swallow the regimental broom as a largeprisoner, it could at least have the consolation of going down with bristlesforward.

But the blows of the antagonist began to grow more weak. Fewer bullets rippedthe air, and finally, when the men slackened to learn of the fight, they couldsee only dark, floating smoke. The regiment lay still and gazed. Presently somechance whim came to the pestering blur, and it began to coil heavily away. Themen saw a ground vacant of fighters. It would have been an empty stage if itwere not for a few corpses that lay thrown and twisted into fantastic shapesupon the sward.

At sight of this tableau, many of the men in blue sprang from behind theircovers and made an ungainly dance of joy. Their eyes burned and a hoarse cheerof elation broke from their dry lips.

It had begun to seem to them that events were trying to prove that they wereimpotent. These little battles had evidently endeavored to demonstrate that themen could not fight well. When on the verge of submission to these opinions,the small duel had showed them that the proportions were not impossible, and byit they had revenged themselves upon their misgivings and upon the foe.

The impetus of enthusiasm was theirs again. They gazed about them with looks ofuplifted pride, feeling new trust in the grim, always confident weapons intheir hands. And they were men.

Chapter XXI.

Presently they knew that no firing threatened them. All ways seemed once moreopened to them. The dusty blue lines of their friends were disclosed a shortdistance away. In the distance there were many colossal noises, but in all thispart of the field there was a sudden stillness.

They perceived that they were free. The depleted band drew a long breath ofrelief and gathered itself into a bunch to complete its trip.

In this last length of journey the men began to show strange emotions. Theyhurried with nervous fear. Some who had been dark and unfaltering in thegrimmest moments now could not conceal an anxiety that made them frantic. Itwas perhaps that they dreaded to be killed in insignificant ways after thetimes for proper military deaths had passed. Or, perhaps, they thought it wouldbe too ironical to get killed at the portals of safety. With backward looks ofperturbation, they hastened.

As they approached their own lines there was some sarcasm exhibited on the partof a gaunt and bronzed regiment that lay resting in the shade of the trees.Questions were wafted to them.

“Where th’ hell yeh been?”

“What yeh comin’ back fer?”

“Why didn’t yeh stay there?”

“Was it warm out there, sonny?”

“Goin’ home now, boys?”

One shouted in taunting mimicry: “Oh, mother, come quick an’ lookat th’ sojers!”

There was no reply from the bruised and battered regiment, save that one manmade broadcast challenges to fist fights and the red-bearded officer walkedrather near and glared in great swashbuckler style at a tall captain in theother regiment. But the lieutenant suppressed the man who wished to fist fight,and the tall captain, flushing at the little fanfare of the red-bearded one,was obliged to look intently at some trees.

The youth’s tender flesh was deeply stung by these remarks. From underhis creased brows he glowered with hate at the mockers. He meditated upon a fewrevenges. Still, many in the regiment hung their heads in criminal fashion, sothat it came to pass that the men trudged with sudden heaviness, as if theybore upon their bended shoulders the coffin of their honor. And the youthfullieutenant, recollecting himself, began to mutter softly in black curses.

They turned when they arrived at their old position to regard the ground overwhich they had charged.

The youth in this contemplation was smitten with a large astonishment. Hediscovered that the distances, as compared with the brilliant measurings of hismind, were trivial and ridiculous. The stolid trees, where much had takenplace, seemed incredibly near. The time, too, now that he reflected, he saw tohave been short. He wondered at the number of emotions and events that had beencrowded into such little spaces. Elfin thoughts must have exaggerated andenlarged everything, he said.

It seemed, then, that there was bitter justice in the speeches of the gaunt andbronzed veterans. He veiled a glance of disdain at his fellows who strewed theground, choking with dust, red from perspiration, misty-eyed, disheveled.

They were gulping at their canteens, fierce to wring every mite of water fromthem, and they polished at their swollen and watery features with coat sleevesand bunches of grass.

However, to the youth there was a considerable joy in musing upon hisperformances during the charge. He had had very little time previously in whichto appreciate himself, so that there was now much satisfaction in quietlythinking of his actions. He recalled bits of color that in the flurry hadstamped themselves unawares upon his engaged senses.

As the regiment lay heaving from its hot exertions the officer who had namedthem as mule drivers came galloping along the line. He had lost his cap. Histousled hair streamed wildly, and his face was dark with vexation and wrath.His temper was displayed with more clearness by the way in which he managed hishorse. He jerked and wrenched savagely at his bridle, stopping thehard-breathing animal with a furious pull near the colonel of the regiment. Heimmediately exploded in reproaches which came unbidden to the ears of the men.They were suddenly alert, being always curious about black words betweenofficers.

“Oh, thunder, MacChesnay, what an awful bull you made of thisthing!” began the officer. He attempted low tones, but his indignationcaused certain of the men to learn the sense of his words. “What an awfulmess you made! Good Lord, man, you stopped about a hundred feet this side of avery pretty success! If your men had gone a hundred feet farther you would havemade a great charge, but as it is—what a lot of mud diggers you’vegot anyway!”

The men, listening with bated breath, now turned their curious eyes upon thecolonel. They had a ragamuffin interest in this affair.

The colonel was seen to straighten his form and put one hand forth inoratorical fashion. He wore an injured air; it was as if a deacon had beenaccused of stealing. The men were wiggling in an ecstasy of excitement.

But of a sudden the colonel’s manner changed from that of a deacon tothat of a Frenchman. He shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, well, general, wewent as far as we could,” he said calmly.

“As far as you could? Did you, b’Gawd?” snorted the other.“Well, that wasn’t very far, was it?” he added, with a glanceof cold contempt into the other’s eyes. “Not very far, I think. Youwere intended to make a diversion in favor of Whiterside. How well yousucceeded your own ears can now tell you.” He wheeled his horse and rodestiffly away.

The colonel, bidden to hear the jarring noises of an engagement in the woods tothe left, broke out in vague damnations.

The lieutenant, who had listened with an air of impotent rage to the interview,spoke suddenly in firm and undaunted tones. “I don’t care what aman is—whether he is a general or what—if he says th’ boysdidn’t put up a good fight out there he’s a damned fool.”

“Lieutenant,” began the colonel, severely, “this is my ownaffair, and I’ll trouble you—”

The lieutenant made an obedient gesture. “All right, colonel, allright,” he said. He sat down with an air of being content with himself.

The news that the regiment had been reproached went along the line. For a timethe men were bewildered by it. “Good thunder!” they ejaculated,staring at the vanishing form of the general. They conceived it to be a hugemistake.

Presently, however, they began to believe that in truth their efforts had beencalled light. The youth could see this conviction weigh upon the entireregiment until the men were like cuffed and cursed animals, but withalrebellious.

The friend, with a grievance in his eye, went to the youth. “I wonderwhat he does want,” he said. “He must think we went out therean’ played marbles! I never see sech a man!”

The youth developed a tranquil philosophy for these moments of irritation.“Oh, well,” he rejoined, “he probably didn’t seenothing of it at all and got mad as blazes, and concluded we were a lot ofsheep, just because we didn’t do what he wanted done. It’s a pityold Grandpa Henderson got killed yestirday—he’d have known that wedid our best and fought good. It’s just our awful luck, that’swhat.”

“I should say so,” replied the friend. He seemed to be deeplywounded at an injustice. “I should say we did have awful luck!There’s no fun in fightin’ fer people when everything yehdo—no matter what—ain’t done right. I have a notion t’stay behind next time an’ let ’em take their ol’ chargean’ go t’ th’ devil with it.”

The youth spoke soothingly to his comrade. “Well, we both did good.I’d like to see the fool what’d say we both didn’t do as goodas we could!”

“Of course we did,” declared the friend stoutly. “An’I’d break th’ feller’s neck if he was as big as a church. Butwe’re all right, anyhow, for I heard one feller say that we two fitth’ best in th’ reg’ment, an’ they had a great argument’bout it. Another feller, ’a course, he had t’ up an’say it was a lie—he seen all what was goin’ on an’ he neverseen us from th’ beginnin’ t’ th’ end. An’ a lotmore stuck in an’ ses it wasn’t a lie—we did fight likethunder, an’ they give us quite a sendoff. But this is what I can’tstand—these everlastin’ ol’ soldiers, titterin’an’ laughin’, an then that general, he’s crazy.”

The youth exclaimed with sudden exasperation: “He’s a lunkhead! Hemakes me mad. I wish he’d come along next time. We’d show ’imwhat—”

He ceased because several men had come hurrying up. Their faces expressed abringing of great news.

“O Flem, yeh jest oughta heard!” cried one, eagerly.

“Heard what?” said the youth.

“Yeh jest oughta heard!” repeated the other, and he arrangedhimself to tell his tidings. The others made an excited circle. “Well,sir, th’ colonel met your lieutenant right by us—it was damnedestthing I ever heard—an’ he ses: ‘Ahem! ahem!’ he ses.‘Mr. Hasbrouck!’ he ses, ‘by th’ way, who was that ladwhat carried th’ flag?’ he ses. There, Flemin’, what d’yeh think ’a that? ‘Who was th’ lad what carried th’flag?’ he ses, an’ th’ lieutenant, he speaks up right away:‘That’s Flemin’, an’ he’s a jimhickey,’ heses, right away. What? I say he did. ‘A jimhickey,’ heses—those ’r his words. He did, too. I say he did. If you kin tellthis story better than I kin, go ahead an’ tell it. Well, then, keep yermouth shet. Th’ lieutenant, he ses: ‘He’s a jimhickey,’and th’ colonel, he ses: ‘Ahem! ahem! he is, indeed, a very goodman t’ have, ahem! He kep’ th’ flag ’way t’th’ front. I saw ’im. He’s a good un,’ ses th’colonel. ‘You bet,’ ses th’ lieutenant, ‘he an’ afeller named Wilson was at th’ head ’a th’ charge, an’howlin’ like Indians all th’ time,’ he ses. ‘Head’a th’ charge all th’ time,’ he ses. ‘A fellernamed Wilson,’ he ses. There, Wilson, m’boy, put that in a letteran’ send it hum t’ yer mother, hay? ‘A feller namedWilson,’ he ses. An’ th’ colonel, he ses: ‘Were they,indeed? Ahem! ahem! My sakes!’ he ses. ‘At th’ head ’ath’ reg’ment?’ he ses. ‘They were,’ ses th’lieutenant. ‘My sakes!’ ses th’ colonel. He ses: ‘Well,well, well,’ he ses. ‘They deserve t’ bemajor-generals.’”

The youth and his friend had said: “Huh!” “Yer lyin’Thompson.” “Oh, go t’ blazes!” “He never sedit.” “Oh, what a lie!” “Huh!” But despite theseyouthful scoffings and embarrassments, they knew that their faces were deeplyflushing from thrills of pleasure. They exchanged a secret glance of joy andcongratulation.

They speedily forgot many things. The past held no pictures of error anddisappointment. They were very happy, and their hearts swelled with gratefulaffection for the colonel and the youthful lieutenant.

Chapter XXII.

When the woods again began to pour forth the dark-hued masses of the enemy theyouth felt serene self-confidence. He smiled briefly when he saw men dodge andduck at the long screechings of shells that were thrown in giant handfuls overthem. He stood, erect and tranquil, watching the attack begin against a part ofthe line that made a blue curve along the side of an adjacent hill. His visionbeing unmolested by smoke from the rifles of his companions, he hadopportunities to see parts of the hard fight. It was a relief to perceive atlast from whence came some of these noises which had been roared into his ears.

Off a short way he saw two regiments fighting a little separate battle with twoother regiments. It was in a cleared space, wearing a set-apart look. They wereblazing as if upon a wager, giving and taking tremendous blows. The firingswere incredibly fierce and rapid. These intent regiments apparently wereoblivious of all larger purposes of war, and were slugging each other as if ata matched game.

In another direction he saw a magnificent brigade going with the evidentintention of driving the enemy from a wood. They passed in out of sight andpresently there was a most awe-inspiring racket in the wood. The noise wasunspeakable. Having stirred this prodigious uproar, and, apparently, finding ittoo prodigious, the brigade, after a little time, came marching airily outagain with its fine formation in nowise disturbed. There were no traces ofspeed in its movements. The brigade was jaunty and seemed to point a proudthumb at the yelling wood.

On a slope to the left there was a long row of guns, gruff and maddened,denouncing the enemy, who, down through the woods, were forming for anotherattack in the pitiless monotony of conflicts. The round red discharges from theguns made a crimson flare and a high, thick smoke. Occasional glimpses could becaught of groups of the toiling artillerymen. In the rear of this row of gunsstood a house, calm and white, amid bursting shells. A congregation of horses,tied to a long railing, were tugging frenziedly at their bridles. Men wererunning hither and thither.

The detached battle between the four regiments lasted for some time. Therechanced to be no interference, and they settled their dispute by themselves.They struck savagely and powerfully at each other for a period of minutes, andthen the lighter-hued regiments faltered and drew back, leaving the dark-bluelines shouting. The youth could see the two flags shaking with laughter amidthe smoke remnants.

Presently there was a stillness, pregnant with meaning. The blue lines shiftedand changed a trifle and stared expectantly at the silent woods and fieldsbefore them. The hush was solemn and churchlike, save for a distant batterythat, evidently unable to remain quiet, sent a faint rolling thunder over theground. It irritated, like the noises of unimpressed boys. The men imaginedthat it would prevent their perched ears from hearing the first words of thenew battle.

Of a sudden the guns on the slope roared out a message of warning. Aspluttering sound had begun in the woods. It swelled with amazing speed to aprofound clamor that involved the earth in noises. The splitting crashes sweptalong the lines until an interminable roar was developed. To those in the midstof it it became a din fitted to the universe. It was the whirring and thumpingof gigantic machinery, complications among the smaller stars. The youth’sears were filled cups. They were incapable of hearing more.

On an incline over which a road wound he saw wild and desperate rushes of menperpetually backward and forward in riotous surges. These parts of the opposingarmies were two long waves that pitched upon each other madly at dictatedpoints. To and fro they swelled. Sometimes, one side by its yells and cheerswould proclaim decisive blows, but a moment later the other side would be allyells and cheers. Once the youth saw a spray of light forms go in houndlikeleaps toward the waving blue lines. There was much howling, and presently itwent away with a vast mouthful of prisoners. Again, he saw a blue wave dashwith such thunderous force against a gray obstruction that it seemed to clearthe earth of it and leave nothing but trampled sod. And always in their swiftand deadly rushes to and fro the men screamed and yelled like maniacs.

Particular pieces of fence or secure positions behind collections of trees werewrangled over, as gold thrones or pearl bedsteads. There were desperate lungesat these chosen spots seemingly every instant, and most of them were bandiedlike light toys between the contending forces. The youth could not tell fromthe battle flags flying like crimson foam in many directions which color ofcloth was winning.

His emaciated regiment bustled forth with undiminished fierceness when its timecame. When assaulted again by bullets, the men burst out in a barbaric cry ofrage and pain. They bent their heads in aims of intent hatred behind theprojected hammers of their guns. Their ramrods clanged loud with fury as theireager arms pounded the cartridges into the rifle barrels. The front of theregiment was a smoke-wall penetrated by the flashing points of yellow and red.

Wallowing in the fight, they were in an astonishingly short time resmudged.They surpassed in stain and dirt all their previous appearances. Moving to andfro with strained exertion, jabbering all the while, they were, with theirswaying bodies, black faces, and glowing eyes, like strange and ugly fiendsjigging heavily in the smoke.

The lieutenant, returning from a tour after a bandage, produced from a hiddenreceptacle of his mind new and portentous oaths suited to the emergency.Strings of expletives he swung lashlike over the backs of his men, and it wasevident that his previous efforts had in nowise impaired his resources.

The youth, still the bearer of the colors, did not feel his idleness. He wasdeeply absorbed as a spectator. The crash and swing of the great drama made himlean forward, intent-eyed, his face working in small contortions. Sometimes heprattled, words coming unconsciously from him in grotesque exclamations. He didnot know that he breathed; that the flag hung silently over him, so absorbedwas he.

A formidable line of the enemy came within dangerous range. They could be seenplainly—tall, gaunt men with excited faces running with long stridestoward a wandering fence.

At sight of this danger the men suddenly ceased their cursing monotone. Therewas an instant of strained silence before they threw up their rifles and fireda plumping volley at the foes. There had been no order given; the men, uponrecognizing the menace, had immediately let drive their flock of bulletswithout waiting for word of command.

But the enemy were quick to gain the protection of the wandering line of fence.They slid down behind it with remarkable celerity, and from this position theybegan briskly to slice up the blue men.

These latter braced their energies for a great struggle. Often, white clinchedteeth shone from the dusky faces. Many heads surged to and fro, floating upon apale sea of smoke. Those behind the fence frequently shouted and yelped intaunts and gibelike cries, but the regiment maintained a stressed silence.Perhaps, at this new assault the men recalled the fact that they had been namedmud diggers, and it made their situation thrice bitter. They were breathlesslyintent upon keeping the ground and thrusting away the rejoicing body of theenemy. They fought swiftly and with a despairing savageness denoted in theirexpressions.

The youth had resolved not to budge whatever should happen. Some arrows ofscorn that had buried themselves in his heart had generated strange andunspeakable hatred. It was clear to him that his final and absolute revenge wasto be achieved by his dead body lying, torn and gluttering, upon the field.This was to be a poignant retaliation upon the officer who had said “muledrivers,” and later “mud diggers,” for in all the wildgraspings of his mind for a unit responsible for his sufferings and commotionshe always seized upon the man who had dubbed him wrongly. And it was his idea,vaguely formulated, that his corpse would be for those eyes a great and saltreproach.

The regiment bled extravagantly. Grunting bundles of blue began to drop. Theorderly sergeant of the youth’s company was shot through the cheeks. Itssupports being injured, his jaw hung afar down, disclosing in the wide cavernof his mouth a pulsing mass of blood and teeth. And with it all he madeattempts to cry out. In his endeavor there was a dreadful earnestness, as if heconceived that one great shriek would make him well.

The youth saw him presently go rearward. His strength seemed in nowiseimpaired. He ran swiftly, casting wild glances for succor.

Others fell down about the feet of their companions. Some of the woundedcrawled out and away, but many lay still, their bodies twisted into impossibleshapes.

The youth looked once for his friend. He saw a vehement young man,powder-smeared and frowzled, whom he knew to be him. The lieutenant, also, wasunscathed in his position at the rear. He had continued to curse, but it wasnow with the air of a man who was using his last box of oaths.

For the fire of the regiment had begun to wane and drip. The robust voice, thathad come strangely from the thin ranks, was growing rapidly weak.

Chapter XXIII.

The colonel came running along the back of the line. There were other officersfollowing him. “We must charge ’m!” they shouted. “Wemust charge ’m!” they cried with resentful voices, as ifanticipating a rebellion against this plan by the men.

The youth, upon hearing the shouts, began to study the distance between him andthe enemy. He made vague calculations. He saw that to be firm soldiers theymust go forward. It would be death to stay in the present place, and with allthe circumstances to go backward would exalt too many others. Their hope was topush the galling foes away from the fence.

He expected that his companions, weary and stiffened, would have to be drivento this assault, but as he turned toward them he perceived with a certainsurprise that they were giving quick and unqualified expressions of assent.There was an ominous, clanging overture to the charge when the shafts of thebayonets rattled upon the rifle barrels. At the yelled words of command thesoldiers sprang forward in eager leaps. There was new and unexpected force inthe movement of the regiment. A knowledge of its faded and jaded condition madethe charge appear like a paroxysm, a display of the strength that comes beforea final feebleness. The men scampered in insane fever of haste, racing as if toachieve a sudden success before an exhilarating fluid should leave them. It wasa blind and despairing rush by the collection of men in dusty and tatteredblue, over a green sward and under a sapphire sky, toward a fence, dimlyoutlined in smoke, from behind which sputtered the fierce rifles of enemies.

The youth kept the bright colors to the front. He was waving his free arm infurious circles, the while shrieking mad calls and appeals, urging on thosethat did not need to be urged, for it seemed that the mob of blue men hurlingthemselves on the dangerous group of rifles were again grown suddenly wild withan enthusiasm of unselfishness. From the many firings starting toward them, itlooked as if they would merely succeed in making a great sprinkling of corpseson the grass between their former position and the fence. But they were in astate of frenzy, perhaps because of forgotten vanities, and it made anexhibition of sublime recklessness. There was no obvious questioning, norfigurings, nor diagrams. There was, apparently, no considered loopholes. Itappeared that the swift wings of their desires would have shattered against theiron gates of the impossible.

He himself felt the daring spirit of a savage, religion-mad. He was capable ofprofound sacrifices, a tremendous death. He had no time for dissections, but heknew that he thought of the bullets only as things that could prevent him fromreaching the place of his endeavor. There were subtle flashings of joy withinhim that thus should be his mind.

He strained all his strength. His eyesight was shaken and dazzled by thetension of thought and muscle. He did not see anything excepting the mist ofsmoke gashed by the little knives of fire, but he knew that in it lay the agedfence of a vanished farmer protecting the snuggled bodies of the gray men.

As he ran a thought of the shock of contact gleamed in his mind. He expected agreat concussion when the two bodies of troops crashed together. This became apart of his wild battle madness. He could feel the onward swing of the regimentabout him and he conceived of a thunderous, crushing blow that would prostratethe resistance and spread consternation and amazement for miles. The flyingregiment was going to have a catapultian effect. This dream made him run fasteramong his comrades, who were giving vent to hoarse and frantic cheers.

But presently he could see that many of the men in gray did not intend to abidethe blow. The smoke, rolling, disclosed men who ran, their faces still turned.These grew to a crowd, who retired stubbornly. Individuals wheeled frequentlyto send a bullet at the blue wave.

But at one part of the line there was a grim and obdurate group that made nomovement. They were settled firmly down behind posts and rails. A flag, ruffledand fierce, waved over them and their rifles dinned fiercely.

The blue whirl of men got very near, until it seemed that in truth there wouldbe a close and frightful scuffle. There was an expressed disdain in theopposition of the little group, that changed the meaning of the cheers of themen in blue. They became yells of wrath, directed, personal. The cries of thetwo parties were now in sound an interchange of scathing insults.

They in blue showed their teeth; their eyes shone all white. They launchedthemselves as at the throats of those who stood resisting. The space betweendwindled to an insignificant distance.

The youth had centered the gaze of his soul upon that other flag. Itspossession would be high pride. It would express bloody minglings, near blows.He had a gigantic hatred for those who made great difficulties andcomplications. They caused it to be as a craved treasure of mythology, hungamid tasks and contrivances of danger.

He plunged like a mad horse at it. He was resolved it should not escape if wildblows and darings of blows could seize it. His own emblem, quivering andaflare, was winging toward the other. It seemed there would shortly be anencounter of strange beaks and claws, as of eagles.

The swirling body of blue men came to a sudden halt at close and disastrousrange and roared a swift volley. The group in gray was split and broken by thisfire, but its riddled body still fought. The men in blue yelled again andrushed in upon it.

The youth, in his leapings, saw, as through a mist, a picture of four or fivemen stretched upon the ground or writhing upon their knees with bowed heads asif they had been stricken by bolts from the sky. Tottering among them was therival color bearer, whom the youth saw had been bitten vitally by the bulletsof the last formidable volley. He perceived this man fighting a last struggle,the struggle of one whose legs are grasped by demons. It was a ghastly battle.Over his face was the bleach of death, but set upon it was the dark and hardlines of desperate purpose. With this terrible grin of resolution he hugged hisprecious flag to him and was stumbling and staggering in his design to go theway that led to safety for it.

But his wounds always made it seem that his feet were retarded, held, and hefought a grim fight, as with invisible ghouls fastened greedily upon his limbs.Those in advance of the scampering blue men, howling cheers, leaped at thefence. The despair of the lost was in his eyes as he glanced back at them.

The youth’s friend went over the obstruction in a tumbling heap andsprang at the flag as a panther at prey. He pulled at it and, wrenching itfree, swung up its red brilliancy with a mad cry of exultation even as thecolor bearer, gasping, lurched over in a final throe and, stiffeningconvulsively, turned his dead face to the ground. There was much blood upon thegrass blades.

At the place of success there began more wild clamorings of cheers. The mengesticulated and bellowed in an ecstasy. When they spoke it was as if theyconsidered their listener to be a mile away. What hats and caps were left tothem they often slung high in the air.

At one part of the line four men had been swooped upon, and they now sat asprisoners. Some blue men were about them in an eager and curious circle. Thesoldiers had trapped strange birds, and there was an examination. A flurry offast questions was in the air.

One of the prisoners was nursing a superficial wound in the foot. He cuddledit, baby-wise, but he looked up from it often to curse with an astonishingutter abandon straight at the noses of his captors. He consigned them to redregions; he called upon the pestilential wrath of strange gods. And with it allhe was singularly free from recognition of the finer points of the conduct ofprisoners of war. It was as if a clumsy clod had trod upon his toe and heconceived it to be his privilege, his duty, to use deep, resentful oaths.

Another, who was a boy in years, took his plight with great calmness andapparent good nature. He conversed with the men in blue, studying their faceswith his bright and keen eyes. They spoke of battles and conditions. There wasan acute interest in all their faces during this exchange of view points. Itseemed a great satisfaction to hear voices from where all had been darkness andspeculation.

The third captive sat with a morose countenance. He preserved a stoical andcold attitude. To all advances he made one reply without variation, “Ah,go t’ hell!”

The last of the four was always silent and, for the most part, kept his faceturned in unmolested directions. From the views the youth received he seemed tobe in a state of absolute dejection. Shame was upon him, and with it profoundregret that he was, perhaps, no more to be counted in the ranks of his fellows.The youth could detect no expression that would allow him to believe that theother was giving a thought to his narrowed future, the pictured dungeons,perhaps, and starvations and brutalities, liable to the imagination. All to beseen was shame for captivity and regret for the right to antagonize.

After the men had celebrated sufficiently they settled down behind the old railfence, on the opposite side to the one from which their foes had been driven. Afew shot perfunctorily at distant marks.

There was some long grass. The youth nestled in it and rested, making aconvenient rail support the flag. His friend, jubilant and glorified, holdinghis treasure with vanity, came to him there. They sat side by side andcongratulated each other.

Chapter XXIV.

The roarings that had stretched in a long line of sound across the face of theforest began to grow intermittent and weaker. The stentorian speeches of theartillery continued in some distant encounter, but the crashes of the musketryhad almost ceased. The youth and his friend of a sudden looked up, feeling adeadened form of distress at the waning of these noises, which had become apart of life. They could see changes going on among the troops. There weremarchings this way and that way. A battery wheeled leisurely. On the crest of asmall hill was the thick gleam of many departing muskets.

The youth arose. “Well, what now, I wonder?” he said. By his tonehe seemed to be preparing to resent some new monstrosity in the way of dins andsmashes. He shaded his eyes with his grimy hand and gazed over the field.

His friend also arose and stared. “I bet we’re goin’ t’git along out of this an’ back over th’ river,” said he.

“Well, I swan!” said the youth.

They waited, watching. Within a little while the regiment received orders toretrace its way. The men got up grunting from the grass, regretting the softrepose. They jerked their stiffened legs, and stretched their arms over theirheads. One man swore as he rubbed his eyes. They all groaned “OLord!” They had as many objections to this change as they would have hadto a proposal for a new battle.

They trampled slowly back over the field across which they had run in a madscamper.

The regiment marched until it had joined its fellows. The reformed brigade, incolumn, aimed through a wood at the road. Directly they were in a mass ofdust-covered troops, and were trudging along in a way parallel to theenemy’s lines as these had been defined by the previous turmoil.

They passed within view of a stolid white house, and saw in front of it groupsof their comrades lying in wait behind a neat breastwork. A row of guns werebooming at a distant enemy. Shells thrown in reply were raising clouds of dustand splinters. Horsemen dashed along the line of intrenchments.

At this point of its march the division curved away from the field and wentwinding off in the direction of the river. When the significance of thismovement had impressed itself upon the youth he turned his head and looked overhis shoulder toward the trampled and débris-strewed ground. He breatheda breath of new satisfaction. He finally nudged his friend. “Well,it’s all over,” he said to him.

His friend gazed backward. “B’Gawd, it is,” he assented. Theymused.

For a time the youth was obliged to reflect in a puzzled and uncertain way. Hismind was undergoing a subtle change. It took moments for it to cast off itsbattleful ways and resume its accustomed course of thought. Gradually his brainemerged from the clogged clouds, and at last he was enabled to more closelycomprehend himself and circumstance.

He understood then that the existence of shot and countershot was in the past.He had dwelt in a land of strange, squalling upheavals and had come forth. Hehad been where there was red of blood and black of passion, and he was escaped.His first thoughts were given to rejoicings at this fact.

Later he began to study his deeds, his failures, and his achievements. Thus,fresh from scenes where many of his usual machines of reflection had been idle,from where he had proceeded sheeplike, he struggled to marshal all his acts.

At last they marched before him clearly. From this present view point he wasenabled to look upon them in spectator fashion and criticise them with somecorrectness, for his new condition had already defeated certain sympathies.

Regarding his procession of memory he felt gleeful and unregretting, for in ithis public deeds were paraded in great and shining prominence. Thoseperformances which had been witnessed by his fellows marched now in wide purpleand gold, having various deflections. They went gayly with music. It waspleasure to watch these things. He spent delightful minutes viewing the gildedimages of memory.

He saw that he was good. He recalled with a thrill of joy the respectfulcomments of his fellows upon his conduct.

Nevertheless, the ghost of his flight from the first engagement appeared to himand danced. There were small shoutings in his brain about these matters. For amoment he blushed, and the light of his soul flickered with shame.

A specter of reproach came to him. There loomed the dogging memory of thetattered soldier—he who, gored by bullets and faint of blood, had frettedconcerning an imagined wound in another; he who had loaned his last of strengthand intellect for the tall soldier; he who, blind with weariness and pain, hadbeen deserted in the field.

For an instant a wretched chill of sweat was upon him at the thought that hemight be detected in the thing. As he stood persistently before his vision, hegave vent to a cry of sharp irritation and agony.

His friend turned. “What’s the matter, Henry?” he demanded.The youth’s reply was an outburst of crimson oaths.

As he marched along the little branch-hung roadway among his prattlingcompanions this vision of cruelty brooded over him. It clung near him alwaysand darkened his view of these deeds in purple and gold. Whichever way histhoughts turned they were followed by the somber phantom of the desertion inthe fields. He looked stealthily at his companions, feeling sure that they mustdiscern in his face evidences of this pursuit. But they were plodding in raggedarray, discussing with quick tongues the accomplishments of the late battle.

“Oh, if a man should come up an’ ask me, I’d say we got a dumgood lickin’.”

“Lickin’—in yer eye! We ain’t licked, sonny.We’re goin’ down here aways, swing aroun’, an’ come inbehint ’em.”

“Oh, hush, with your comin’ in behint ’em. I’ve seenall ’a that I wanta. Don’t tell me about comin’ inbehint—”

“Bill Smithers, he ses he’d rather been in ten hundred battles thanbeen in that heluva hospital. He ses they got shootin’ in th’nighttime, an’ shells dropped plum among ’em in th’ hospital.He ses sech hollerin’ he never see.”

“Hasbrouck? He’s th’ best off’cer in this herereg’ment. He’s a whale.”

“Didn’t I tell yeh we’d come aroun’ in behint’em? Didn’t I tell yeh so? We—”

“Oh, shet yeh mouth!”

For a time this pursuing recollection of the tattered man took all elation fromthe youth’s veins. He saw his vivid error, and he was afraid that itwould stand before him all his life. He took no share in the chatter of hiscomrades, nor did he look at them or know them, save when he felt suddensuspicion that they were seeing his thoughts and scrutinizing each detail ofthe scene with the tattered soldier.

Yet gradually he mustered force to put the sin at a distance. And at last hiseyes seemed to open to some new ways. He found that he could look back upon thebrass and bombast of his earlier gospels and see them truly. He was gleefulwhen he discovered that he now despised them.

With this conviction came a store of assurance. He felt a quiet manhood,nonassertive but of sturdy and strong blood. He knew that he would no morequail before his guides wherever they should point. He had been to touch thegreat death, and found that, after all, it was but the great death. He was aman.

So it came to pass that as he trudged from the place of blood and wrath hissoul changed. He came from hot plowshares to prospects of clover tranquilly,and it was as if hot plowshares were not. Scars faded as flowers.

It rained. The procession of weary soldiers became a bedraggled train,despondent and muttering, marching with churning effort in a trough of liquidbrown mud under a low, wretched sky. Yet the youth smiled, for he saw that theworld was a world for him, though many discovered it to be made of oaths andwalking sticks. He had rid himself of the red sickness of battle. The sultrynightmare was in the past. He had been an animal blistered and sweating in theheat and pain of war. He turned now with a lover’s thirst to images oftranquil skies, fresh meadows, cool brooks—an existence of soft andeternal peace.

Over the river a golden ray of sun came through the hosts of leaden rainclouds.

THE END.

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