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The Red Acorn

by John McElroy · English · Gutenberg #2766 · 478,391 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Red Acorn

Author: John McElroy


        
Release date: August 1, 2001 [eBook #2766]
                Most recently updated: February 25, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2766

Credits: Produced by Brett Fishburne, and David Widger


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The Red Acorn

by John McElroy




Preface



The name given this story is that made glorious by the valor and
achievements of the splendid First Division of the Fourteenth Army
Corps, the cognizance of which was a crimson acorn, worn on the
breasts of its gallant soldiers, and borne upon their battle flags.
There are few gatherings of men into which one can go to-day
without finding some one wearing, as his most cherished ornament,
a red acorn, frequently wrought in gold and studded with precious
stones, and which tells that its wearer is a veteran of Mill
Springs, Perryville, Shiloh, Corinth, Stone River, Chickamauga,
Mission Ridge, Atlanta, Jonesville, March to the Sea, and Bentonville.

The Fourteenth Corps was the heart of the grand old Army of the
Cumberland--an army that never new defeat.  Its nucleus was a few
scattered regiments in Eastern Kentucky, in 1861, which had the
good fortune to be commanded by Gen. George H. Thomas.  With them
he won the first real victory that blessed our arms.  It grew as
he grew, and under his superb leadership it was shaped and welded
and tempered into one of the mightiest military weapons the world
ever saw.  With it Thomas wrung victory from defeat on the bloody
fields of Stone River and Chickamauga; with it he dealt the final
crushing blow of the Atlanta campaign, and with it defeat was again
turned to victory at Bentonville.

The characters introduced into the story all belonged to or
co-operated with the First Division of the Fourteenth Corps.  The
Corps' badge was the Acorn.  As was the custom in the army, the
divisions in each Corps were distinguished by the color of the
badges--the First's being red, the Second's white, and the Third's
blue.  There was a time when this explanation was hardly necessary,
but now eighteen years have elapsed since the Acorn flags fluttered
victoriously over the last field of battle, and a generation has
grown up to which they are but a tradition.  J. M.





Contents.




Chapter I.--A Declaration,  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -   9
Chapter II.--First Shots, - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  18
Chapter III.--A Race, - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  28
Chapter IV.--Disgrace,  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  38
Chapter V.--The Lint-Scraping and Bandage-making Union, - - -  52
Chapter VI.--The Awakening, - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  62
Chapter VII.--Pomp and Circumstance of Glorious War,  - - - -  71
Chapter VIII.--The Tedium of Camp,  - - - - - - - - - - - - -  85
Chapter IX.--On the March,  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  92
Chapter X.--The Mountaineer's Revenge,  - - - - - - - - - - - 112
Chapter XI.--Through the Mountain and the Night,  - - - - - - 126
Chapter XII.--Aunt Debby Brill, - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 141
Chapter XIII.--An Apple Jack Raid,  - - - - - - - - - - - - - 160
Chapter XIV.--In the Hospital,  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 175
Chapter XV.--Making Acquaintance with Duty, - - - - - - - - - 184
Chapter XVI.--The Ambuscade,  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 204
Chapter XVII.--Alspaugh on a Bed of Pain, - - - - - - - - - - 230
Chapter XVIII.--Secret Service, - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 252
Chapter XIX.--The Battle of Stone River,  - - - - - - - - - - 279





Chapter I.  A Declaration.




“O, what is so rare as a day in June?
  Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries the Earth if it be in tune,
  And over it softly her warm ear lays.”
                             --Lowell.


Of all human teachers they were the grandest who gave us the New
Testament, and made it a textbook for Man in every age.  Transcendent
benefactors of the race, they opened in it a never-failing well-spring
of the sweet waters of Consolation and Hope, which have flowed
over, fertilized, and made blossom as a rose the twenty-century
wide desert of the ills of human existence.

But they were not poets, as most of the authors of the Old Testament
were.

They were too much in earnest in their great work of carrying the
glad evangel of Redemption to all the earth--they so burned with
eagerness to pour their joyful tidings into every ear, that they
recked little of the FORM in which the saving intelligence was
conveyed.

Had they been poets would they have conceived Heaven as a place
with foundations of jasper, sapphires and emeralds, gates of pearl,
and streets of burnished gold that shone like glass?  Never.

That showed them to be practical men, of a Semitic cast of mind,
who addressed hearers that agreed with them in regarding gold and
precious stones as the finest things of which the heart could dream.

Had they been such lovers of God's handiwork in Nature as the Greek
religious teachers--who were also poets--they would have painted
us a Heaven vaulted by the breath of opening flowers, and made
musical by the sweet songs of birds in the first rapture of finding
their young mates.

In other words they would have given us a picture of earth on a
perfect June day.

On the afternoon of such a day as this Rachel Bond sat beneath an
apple-tree at the crest of a moderate hill, and looked dreamily
away to where, beyond the village of Sardis at the foot of the hill,
the Miami River marked the beautiful valley like a silver ribbon
carelessly flung upon a web of green velvet.  Rather she seemed
to be looking there, for the light that usually shown outward in
those luminous eyes was turned inward.  The little volume of poems
had dropped unheeded from the white hand.  It had done its office:
the passion of its lines had keyed her thoughts to a harmony that
suffused her whole being, until all seemed as naturally a part
of the glorious day as the fleecy clouds in the sapphire sky, the
cheerful hum of the bees, and the apple-blossoms' luxurious scent.

Her love--and, quite as much, her girlish ambition--had been crowned
with violets and bays some weeks before, when the fever-heat of
patriotism seemed to bring another passion in Harry Glen's bosom
to the eruptive point, and there came the long-waited-for avowal of
his love, which was made on the evening before his company departed
to respond to the call for troops which followed the fall of Fort
Sumter.

Does it seem harsh to say that she had sought to bring about this
DENOUEMENT?  Rather, it seems that her efforts were commendable.
She was a young woman of marriageable age.  She believed her her
mission in life was marriage to some man who would make her a good
husband, and whom she would in turn love, honor, and strive to
make happy.  Harry Glen's family was the equal of her's in social
station, and a little above it in wealth.  to this he added educational
and personal advantages that made him the most desirable match in
Sardis.  Starting with the premises given above, her first conclusion
was the natural one that she should marry the best man available,
and the next that that man was Harry Glen.

Her efforts had been bounded by the strictest code of maidenly
ethics, and so artistically developed that the only persons who
penetrated their skillful veiling, and detected her as a “designing
creature,” were two or three maiden friends, whose maneuvers toward
the same objective were brought to naught by her success.

It must be admitted that refining causists may find room for censure
in this making Ambition the advance guard to spy out the ground
that Love is to occupy.  But, after all, is there not a great deal
of mistake about the way that true love begins?  If we had the data
before us we should be pained by the enlightenment that, in the
vast majority of cases the regard of young people for each other
is fixed in the first instance by motives that will bear quite as
little scrutiny as Miss Rachel Bond's.

We can afford to be careless how the germ of love is planted.  The
main thing is how it is watered and tended, and brought to a lasting
and beautiful growth.  Rachel's ambition gratified, there had been
a steady rise toward flood in the tide of her affections.  She
was not long in growing to love Harry with all the intensity of a
really ardent nature.

After the meeting at which Harry had signed the recruiting roll,
he had taken her home up the long, sloping hill, through moonlight
as soft, as inspiring, as glorifying as that which had melted even
the frosty Goddess of Maidenhood, so that she stooped from her
heavenly unapproachableness, and kissed the handsome Endymion as
he slept.

Though little and that commonplace was said as they walked, subtle
womanly instinct prepared Rachel's mind for what was coming, and
her grasp upon Harry's arm assumed a new feeling that hurried him
on to the crisis.

They stopped beneath the old apple-tree, at the crest of the hill,
and in front of the house.  Its gnarled and twisted limbs had been
but freshly clothed in a suit of fragrant green leaves.

The ruddy bonfires, lighted for the war-meeting, still burned in
the village below.  The hum of supplementary speeches to the excited
crowds that still lingered about came to their ears, mingled with
cheers from throat rapidly growing hoarse, and the throb and wail
of fife and drum.  Then, uplifted on the voices of hundreds who sang
it as only men, and men swayed by powerful emotions can, rose the
ever-glorious “Star-Spangled Banner,” loftiest and most inspiring
of national hymns.  Through its long, forceful measures, which have
the sweep and ring of marching battalions, swung the singers, with
a passionate earnestness that made every note and word glow with
meaning.  The swelling paean told of the heroism and sacrifice
with which the foundations of the Nation were laid, of the glory
to which the land had risen, and then its mood changing to one of
direness and wrath, it foretold the just punishment of those who
broke the peace of a happy land.

The mood of the Sardis people was that patriotic exaltation which
reigned in every city and village of the North on that memorable
night of April, 1861.

But Rachel and Harry had left far behind them this passion of the
multitude, which had set their own to throbbing, even as the roar
of a cannon will waken the vibrations of harp-strings.  Around where
they stood was the peace of the night and sleep.  The perfume of
violets and hyacinths, and of myriads of opening buds seemed shed
by the moon with her silvery rays through the soft, dewy air; a few
nocturnal insects droned hither and thither, and “drowsy tinklings
lulled the distant folds.”

As their steps were arrested Rachel released her grasp from Harry's
arm, but he caught her hand before it fell to her side, and held it
fast.  She turned her face frankly toward him, and he looked down
with anxious eyes upon the broad white forehead, framed in silken
black hair, upon great eyes, flaming with a meaning that he feared
to interpret, upon the eloquent lines about the mobile, sensitive
mouth, all now lifted into almost supernatural beauty by the
moonlight's spiritualizing magic.

What he said he could never afterward recall.  His first memory
was that of a pause in his speech, when he saw the ripe, red lips
turned toward him with a gesture of the proud head that was both
an assent and invitation.  The kiss that he pressed there thrilled
him with the intoxication of unexpectedly rewarded love, and Rachel
with the gladness of triumph.

What they afterward said was as incoherent as the conversations of
those rapturous moments ever are.

“You know we leave in the morning?” he said, when at last it became
necessary for him to go.

“Yes,” she answered calmly.  “And perhaps it is better that it
should be so--that we be apart for a little while to consider this
new-found happiness and understand it.  I shall be sustained with
the thought that in giving you to the country I have given more
than any one else.  I know that you will do something that will
make me still prouder of you, and my presentiments, which never
fail me, assure me that you will return to me safely.”

His face showed a little disappointment with the answer.

She reached above her head, and breaking off a bud handed it to
him, saying in the words of Juliet:

“Sweet, good-night:
This bud of love, by Summer's ripening breath,
May prove a beauteous flower, when next we meet.”

He kissed the bud, and put it in his bosom; kissed her again
passionately, and descended the hill to prepare for his departure
in the morning.

She was with the rest of the village at the depot to bid the company
good-bye, and was amazed to find how far the process of developing
the bud into the flower had gone in her heart since parting with
her lover.  Her previous partiality and admiration for him appeared
now very tame and colorless, beside the emotions that stirred her
at the sight of him marching with erect grace at the head of his
company.  But while all about her were tears and sobs, and modest
girls revealing unsuspecting attachments in the agitation of parting,
her eyes were undimmed.  She was proud and serene, a heightening
of the color in her cheeks being the only sign of unusual feeling.
Harry came to her for a moment, held her hand tightly in his, took
the bud from his bosom, touched it significantly with his lips,
and sprang upon the train which was beginning to move away.

The days that followed were halcyon for her.  While the other women
of Sardis, whose loved ones were gone, were bewailing the dangers
they would encounter, her proud spirit only contemplated the chances
that Harry would have for winning fame.  Battles meant bright
laurels for him in which she would have a rightful share.

Her mental food became the poetry of love, chivalry and glorious
war.  The lyric had a vivid personal interest.  Tales of romantic
daring and achievement were suggestions of possibilities in Harry's
career.  Her waking hours were mainly spent, book in hand, under
the old apple-tree that daily grew dearer to her.

The exalted mood in which we found her was broken in upon by the
sound of some one shutting the gate below very emphatically.  Looking
down she saw her father approaching with such visible signs in face
and demeanor of strong excitement that she arose and went to him.

“Why, father, what can be the matter?” she said, stopping in front
of him, with the open book pressed to her breast.

“Matter enough, I'm afraid, Rachel.  There's been a battle near a
place called Rich Mountain, in Western Virginia, and Harry Glen's---”

“O, father,” she said, growing very white, “Harry's killed.”

“No; not killed.”  The old man's lip curled with scorn.  “It's
worse.  He seems to've suddenly discovered he wasn't prepared to
die; he didn't want to rush all at once into the presence of his
Maker.  Mebbe he didn't think it'd be good manners.  You know he
was always stronger on etikwet than anything else.  In short, he's
showed the white feather.  A dozen or more letters have come from
the boys telling all about it, and the town's talking of nothing
else.  There's one of the letters.  It's from Jake Alspaugh, who
quite working for me to enlist.  Read it yourself.”

The old gentleman threw the letter upon the grass, and strode on
angrily into the house.  Rachel smoothed out the crumpled sheet,
and read with a growing sickness at heart:


Mr. Bond--Deer Sur:

i taik my pen in hand to lett you no that with the exception of an
occashunal tuch of roomaticks, an boonions all over my fete from
hard marchin, ime all rite, an i hope you ar injoin the saim blessin.
Weve jest had an awful big fite, and the way we warmed it to the
secshers jest beat the jews.  i doant expect theyve stopt runnin
yit.  All the Sardis boys done bully except Lieutenant Harry Glen.
The smell of burnt powder seamed to onsettle his narves.  He tuk
powerful sick all at wunst, jest as the trail was gittin rather
fresh, and he lay groanin wen the rest of the company marched off
into the fite.  He doant find the klime-it here as healthy as it
is in Sardis.  i 'stinguished myself and have bin promoted, and
ive got a Rebel gun for you with a bore big enuff to put a walnut
in, and it'll jest nock your hole darned shoulder off every time
you shoot it.  No more yours til deth send me some finecut tobacker
for heavens sake.

Jacob Alspaugh.


Rachel tore the letter into a thousand fragments, and flung the
volume of poems into the ditch below.  She hastened to her room,
and no one saw her again until the next morning, when she came
down dressed in somber black, her face pale, and her colorless lips
tightly compressed.





Chapter II.  First Shots.




“Cowards fear to die; but courage stout,
Rather than live in snuff, will be put out.”
    --Sir Walter Raleigh, on “The Snuff of a Candle.”


All military courage of any value is the offspring of pride and
will.  The existence of what is called “natural courage” may well
be doubted.  What is frequently mistaken for it is either perfect
self-command, or a stolid indifference, arising from dull-brained
inability to comprehend what really is danger.

The first instincts of man teach him to shun all sources of harm,
and if his senses are sufficiently acute to perceive danger, his
natural disposition is to avoid encountering it.  This disposition
can only be overcome by the exercise of the power of pride and
will--pride to aspire to the accomplishment of certain things, even
though risk attend, and will to carry out those aspirations.

Harry Glen was apparently not deficient in either pride or will.  The
close observer, however, seemed to see as his mastering sentiment
a certain starile selfishness, not uncommon among the youths of his
training and position in the slow-living, hum-drum country towns
of Ohio.  The only son of a weakly-fondling mother and a father too
earnestly treading the narrow path of early diligences and small
savings by which a man becomes the richest in his village, to pay
any attention to him, Harry grew up a self-indulgent, self-sufficient
boy.  His course at the seminary and college naturally developed
this into a snobbish assumption that he was of finer clay than
the commonality, and in some way selected by fortune for her finer
displays and luxurious purposes.  I have termed this a “sterile
selfishness,” to distinguish it from that grand egoism which in
large minds is fruitful of high accomplishments and great deeds,
and to denote a force which, in the sons of the average “rich” men
of the county seats, is apt to expend itself in satisfaction at
having finer clothes and faster horses and pleasanter homes, than
the average--in a pride of white hands and a scorn of drudgery.

When Harry signed his name upon the recruiting roll--largely
impelled thereto by the delicately-flattering suggestion that he
should lead off for the youth of Sardis--he had not the slightest
misgiving that by so doing he would subject himself to any of the
ills and discomforts incidental to carrying out the enterprise upon
which they were embarking.  He, like every one else, had no very
clear idea of what the company would be called upon to do or undergo;
but no doubt obtruded itself into his mind that whatever might be
disagreeable in it would fall to some one else's lot, and he continue
to have the same pleasant exemption that had been his good fortune
so far through life.

And though the company was unexpectedly ordered to the field in
the rugged mountains of Western Virginia, instead of to pleasant
quarters about Washington, there was nothing to shake this comfortable
belief.  The slack discipline of the first three months' service,
and the confusion of ideas that prevailed in the beginning of the
war as to military duties and responsibilities, enabled him to
spend all the time he chose away from his company and with congenial
spirits, about headquarters, and to make of the expedition, so
far as he was concerned, a pleasant picnic.  Occasionally little
shadows were thrown by the sight of corpses brought in, with
ugly-looking bullet holes in head or breast, but these were always
of the class he looked down upon, and he connected their bad luck
in some way with their condition in life.  Doubtless some one had
to go where there was danger of being shot, as some one had to
dig ditches and help to pry wagons out of the mud, but there was
something rather preposterous in the thought that anything of this
kind was incumbent upon him.

The mutterings of the men against an officer, who would not share
their hardships and duties, did not reach his ears, nor yet the
gibes of the more earnest of the officers at the “young headquarter
swells,” whose interest and zeal were nothing to what they would
have taken in a fishing excursion.

It came about very naturally and very soon that this continual
avoidance of duty in directions where danger might be encountered
was stigmatized  by the harsher name of cowardice.  Neither did
this come to his knowledge, and he was consequently ignorant that
he had delivered a fatal stab to his reputation one fine morning
when, the regiment being ordered out with three days' rations and
forty rounds of cartridges, the sergeant who was sent in search
of him returned and reported that he was sick in his tent.  Jacob
Alspaugh expressed the conclusion instantly arrived at by every
one in the regiment:

“It's all you could expect of one of them kid-glove fellers, to
weaken when it came to serious business.”

Harry's self-sufficiency had left so little room for anything
that did not directly concern his own comfort, that he could not
understand the deadly earnestness of the men he saw file out of
camp, or that there was any urgent call for him to join them in
their undertaking.

“Bob Bennett's always going where there's no need of it,” he said
to a companion, as he saw the last of the regiment disappear into
the woods on the mountain side.  “He could have staid back here
with us just as well as not, instead of trudging off through the
heat over these devilish roads, and probably get into a scrape for
which no one will thank him.”

“Yes,” said Ned Burnleigh, with his affected drawl, “what the
devil's the use, I'd like to know, for a fellah's putting himself
out to do things, when there's any quantity of other fellahs, that
can't be better employed, ready and even anxious to do them.”

“That's so.  But it's getting awful hot here.  Let's go over to the
shade, where we were yesterday, and have Dick bring us a bucket of
cold spring water and the bottles and things.”

---

“Abe!” said Jake Alspaugh to his file-leader--a red-headed, pock-marked
man, whose normal condition was that of outspoken disgust at every
thing--“this means a fight.”

“Your news would've been fresh and interesting last night,” growled
Abe Bolton.  “I suppose that's what we brought our guns along for.”

“Yes; but somebody's likely to get killed.”

“Well, you nor me don't have to pay their life insurance, as I know
on.”

“But it may be you or me,”

“The devil'd be might anxious for green wood before he'd call you
in.”

“Come, now, don't talk that way.  This is a mighty serious time.”

“I'll make it a durned sight seriouser for you if you don't keep
them splay feet o'your'n offen my heels when we're marching.”

“Don't you think we'd better pay, or--something?”

“You might try taking up a collection.”

“Try starting a hymn, Jake,” said a slender young man at his right
elbow, whose face showed a color more intimately connected with the
contents of his canteen than the heat of the day.  “Line it out,
and we'll all join in.  Something like this, for example:

'Hark, from the tombs a doleful sound
  Mine ears attend the cry.
Ye living men, come view the ground
  Where you must shortly lie.'”

Alspaugh shuddered visibly.

“Come, spunk up, Jake,” continued the slender young man.  “Think
how proud all your relations will be of you, if you die for your
country.”

“I'm mad at all of my relations, and I don't want to do nothing to
please 'em,” sighed Jake.

“But I hope you're not so greedy as to want to live always?” said
the slender young man, who answered roll-call to Kent Edwards.

“No, but I don't want to be knocked off like a green apple, before
I'm ripe and ready.”

“Better be knocked off green and unripe,” said Kent, his railing
mood changing to one of sad introspection, “than to prematurely
fall, from a worm gnawing at your heart.”

Jake's fright was not so great as to make him forego the opportunity
for a brutal retort:

“You mean the 'worm of the still,' I s'pose.  Well, it don't gnaw
at my heart so much as at some other folkses' that I know'd.”

Kent's face crimsoned still deeper, and he half raised his musket,
as if to strike him, but at that moment came the order to march,
and the regiment moved forward.

The enemy was by this time known to be near, and the men marched
in that silence that comes from tense expectation.

The day was intensely hot, and the stagnant, sultry air was perfumed
with the thousand sweet odors that rise in the West Virginia forests
in the first flush of Summer.

The road wound around the steep mountain side, through great thickets
of glossy-leaved laurel, by banks of fragrant honeysuckle, by beds
of millions of sweet-breathing, velvety pansies, nestling under huge
shadowy rocks, by acres of white puccoon flowers, each as lovely
as the lily that grows by cool Siloam's shady rill--all scattered
there with Nature's reckless profusion, where no eye saw them from
year to year save those of the infrequent hunter, those of the
thousands of gaily-plumaged birds that sang and screamed through the
branches of the trees above, and those of the hideous rattlesnakes
that crawled and hissed in the crevices of the shelving rocks.

At last the regiment halted under the grateful shadows of the
broad-topped oaks and chestnuts.  A patriarchal pheasant, drumming
on a log near by some uxorious communication to his brooding mate,
distended his round eyes in amazement at the strange irruption of
men and horses, and then whirred away in a transport of fear.  A
crimson crested woodpecker ceased his ominous tapping, and flew
boldly to a neighboring branch, where he could inspect the new
arrival to good advantage and determine his character.

The men threw themselves down for a moment's rest, on the springing
moss that covered the whole mountain side.  A hum of comment
and conversation arose.  Jake Alspaugh began to think that there
was not likely to be any fight after all, and his spirits rose
proportionately.  Abe Bolton growled that the cowardly officers
had no doubt deliberately misled the regiment, that a fight might
be avoided.  Kent Edwards saw a nodding May-apple flower--as fair
as a calla and as odorous as a pink--at a little distance, and
hastened to pick it.  He came back with it in the muzzle of his
gun, and his hands full of violets.

A thick-bodied rattlesnake crawled slowly and clumsily out from the
shelter of a little ledge, his fearful eyes gleaming with deadly
intentions against a ground-squirrel frisking upon the end of a
mossy log, near where Captain Bob Bennett was seated, poring over
a troublesome detail in the “Tactics.”  The snake saw the man, and
his awkward movement changed at once into one of electric alertness.
He sounded his terrible rattle, and his dull diamonds and stripes
lighted up with the glare that shines through an enraged man's face.
The thick body seemed to lengthen out and gain a world of sinuous
suppleness.  With the quickness of a flash he was coiled, with
head erect, forked tongue protruding, and eyes flaming like satanic
jewels.

A shout appraised Captain Bennett of his danger.  He dropped the
book, sprang to his feet with a quickness that matched the snake's,
and instinctively drew his sword.  Stepping a little to one side
as the reptile launched itself at him, he dexterously cut it in two
with a sweeping stroke.  A shout of applause rose from the excited
boys, who gathered around to inspect the slain serpent and congratulate
the Captain upon his skillful disposition of his assailant.

“O, that's only my old bat-stroke that used to worry the boys in
town-hall so much,” said the Captain carelessly.  “It's queer what
things turn out useful to a man, and when he least expects them.”

A long, ringing yell from a thousand throats cleft the air, and with
its last notes came the rattle of musketry from the brow of the
hill across the little ravine.  The bullets sang viciously overhead.
They cut the leaves and branches with sharp little crashes, and
struck men's bodies with a peculiar slap.  A score of men in the
disordered group fell back dead or dying upon the green moss.

“Of course, we might've knowed them muddle-headed officers 'd run
us right slap into a hornets' nest of Rebels before they knowed a
thing about it,” grumbled Abe Bolton, hastily tearing a cartridge
with his teeth, and forcing it into his gun.

“Hold on, my weak-kneed patriot,” said Kent Edwards, catching Jake
Alspaugh by the collar, and turning him around so that he faced
the enemy again.  “It's awful bad manners to rush out of a matinee
just as the performance begins.  You disturb the people who've
come to enjoy the show.  Keep you seat till the curatin goes down.
You'll find enough to interest you.”

The same sudden inspiration of common-sense that had flashed upon
Captain Bennett, in encountering the snake now raised him to the
level of this emergency.  He comprehended that the volley they had
received had emptied every Rebel gun.  The distance was so short
that the enemy could be reached before they had time to re-load.
But no time must be lost in attempting to form, or in having the
order regularly given by the Colonel.  He sprang toward the enemy,
waving his sword, and shouted in tones that echoed back from the
cliffs:

“Attention, BATTALION!  Charge bayonets!  FORWARD, DOUBLE-QUICK,
MARCH!”

A swelling cheer answered him.  His own company ran forward to
follow his impetuous lead.  The others joined in rapidly.  Away
they dashed down the side of the declivity, and in an instant more
were swarming up the opposite side toward the astonished Rebels.
Among these divided councils reigned.  Some were excited snapping
unloaded guns at the oncoming foe; others were fixing bayonets,
and sturdily urging their comrades to do likewise, and meet the
rushing wave of cold steel with a counter wave.  The weaker-hearted
ones were already clambering up the mountain-side out of reach of
harm.

There was no time for debate.  The blue line led by Bennett flung
itself upon the dark-brown mass of Rebels like an angry wave dashing
over a flimsy bank of sand, and in an instant there was nothing
to be done but pursue the disrupted and flying fragments.  It was
all over.





Chapter III.  A Race.




“Some have greatness thrust upon them.” -- Twelfth Night.


The unexpected volley probably disturbed private Jacob Alspaugh's
mind more than that of any other man in the regiment.  It produced
there an effect akin to the sensation of nauseous emetic in his
stomach.

He had long enjoyed the enviable distinction of being the “best
man” among combative youths of Sardis, and his zeal and invariable
success in the fistic tournaments which form so large a part of
the interest in life of a certain class of young men in villages,
had led his townsmen to entertain extravagant hopes as to his
achievements in the field.

But, like most of his class, his courage was purely physical, and
a low order of that type.  He was bold in those encounters where
he knew that his superior strength and agility rendered small the
chances of his receiving any serious bodily harm, but of that high
pride and mounting spirit which lead to soldierly deeds he had
none.

The sight of the dying men on each side shriveled his heart with
a deadly panic.

“O, Kent,” he groaned, “Lemme go, and let's git out o' here.  This's
just awful, and it'll be ten times wuss in another minnit.  Let's
git behind that big rock there, as quick as the Lord'll let us.”

He turned to pull away from Kent's detaining hand, when he heard
Captain Bennett's order to the regiment to charge, and the hand
relaxed its hold.  Jake faced to the front again and saw Kent and
Abe Bolton, and the rest of the boys rush forward, leaving him and
a score of other weak-kneed irresolutes standing alone behind.

Again he thought he would seek the refuge of the rock, but at that
moment the Union line swept up to the Rebels, scattering them as
a wave does dry sand.

Jake's mental motions were reasonably rapid.  Now he was not long
in realizing that all the danger was past, and that he had an
opportunity of gaining credit cheaply.  He acted  promptly.  Fixing
his bayonet, he gave a fearful yell and started forward on a run
for the position which the regiment had gained.

He was soon in the lead of the pursuers, and appeared, by his
later zeal, to be making amends for his earlier tardiness.  As he
ran ahead he shouted savagely:

“Run down the hellions!  Shoot 'em!  Stab 'em! Bay'net 'em!  Don't
let one of 'em git away.”

There is an excitement in a man-chase that is not even approached
by any other kind of hunting, and Jake soon became fairly intoxicated
with it.

He quickly overtook one or two of the slower-paced Rebels, who
surrendered quietly, and were handed by him over to the other boys
as they came up, and conducted by them to the rear.

Becoming more excited he sped on, entirely unmindful of how far he
was outstripping his comrades.

A hundred yards ahead of him was a tall, gaunt Virginian, clad
in butternut-colored jeans of queer cut and pattern, and a great
bell-crowned hat of rough, gray beaver.  Though his gait was shambling
and his huge splay feet rose and fell in the most awkward way, he
went over the ground with a swiftness that made it rather doubtful
whether Jake was gaining on him at all.  But the latter was encouraged
by the sings of his chase's distress.  First the bell-crowned hat
flew off and rolled behind, and Jake could not resist the temptation
to give it a kick which sent it spinning into a clump of honeysuckles.
Then the Rebel flung off a haversack, whose flapping interfered
with his speed, and this was followed by a clumsily-constructed
cedar canteen.  The thought flashed into Jake's mind that this was
probably filled with the much-vaunted peach-brandy of that section;
and as ardent sprits were one of his weaknesses, the temptation to
stop and pick up the canteen was very strong, but he conquered it
and hurried on after his prey.  Next followed the fugitive's belt,
loaded down with an antique cartridge-box, a savage knife made from
a rasp and handled with buckhorn, and a fierce-looking horse-pistol
with a flint-lock.

“I seemed to be bustin' up a moosyum o' revolutionary relics,” said
Jake afterward, in describing the incident.  “The feller dropped
keepsakes from his forefathers like a bird moltin' its feathers
on a windy day.  I begun to think that if I kep up the chase purty
soon he'd begin to shed Continental money and knee-britches.”

The fugitive turned off to the right into a narrow path that wound
through the laurel thickets.  Jake followed with all the energy
that remained in him, confident that a short distance more would
bring him so close to his game that he could force his surrender
by a threat of bayoneting.  He caught up to within a rod of the
Rebel, and was already foreshortening his gun for a lunge in case
of refusal to surrender on demand, when he was amazed to see the
Rebel whirl around, level his gun at him, and order HIS surrender.
Jake was so astonished that he stumbled, fell forward and dropped
his gun.  As he raised his eyes he saw three or four other Rebels
step out from behind a rock, and level their guns upon him with an
expression of bloodthirstiness that seemed simply fiendish.

Then it flashed upon him how far away he was from all his comrades,
and that the labyrinth of laurel made them even more remote.  With
this realization came the involuntary groan:

“O, Lordy! it's all up with me.  I'm a goner, sure!”

His courage did not ooze out of his fingers, like the historic Bob
Acres's; it vanished like gas from a rent balloon.  He clasped his
hands and tried to think of some prayer.

“Now I lay me,” he murmured.

“Shan't we shoot the varmint?” said one of the Rebels, with a motion
of his gun in harmony with that idea.

“O, mister--mister--GOOD mister, DON'T!  PLEASE don't!  I swear I
didn't mean to do no harm to you.”

“Wall, ye acted monty quare fur a man that didn't mean no harm,”
 said the pursued man, regaining his breath with some difficulty.
“A-chasin' me down with thet ar prod on yer gun, an' a-threatenin'
to stick hit inter me at every jump.  Only wanted ter see me run,
did yer?”

“O, mister, I only done it because I wuz ordered to.  I couldn't
help myself; I swear I couldn't.”

“Whar's the ossifers thet wuz a-orderin' ye?  Whar's the captins
that wuz puttin' ye up ter hit?  Thar wan't no one in a mile of
ye.  Guess we'd better shoot ye.”

Again Jake raised his voice in abject appeal for mercy.  There was
nothing he was not willing to promise if only his life were only
spared.

“Wouldn't hit be better ter bay'net him?” suggested one of the
Rebels, entirely unmoved, as his comrades were, by Jake's piteous
pleadings.  “Ef we go ter shootin' 'round yere hit'll liekly bring
the Yankees right onter us.”

“I 'spect hit would be better ter take him back a little ways, any
way,” said the man whom Jake had pursued.  “Pick up his gun thar,
Eph.  Come along, you, an' be monty peart about hit, fur we're in
a powerful bad frame o' mind ter be fooled with.  I wouldn't gin a
fi'-penny-bit fur all yer blue-bellied life's worth.  The boys ar
jest pizen mad from seein' so many o' thar kin and folks killed by
yer crowd o' thievin' Hessians.”

Grateful for even a momentary respite, Jake rose from his knees
with alacrity and humbly followed one of the Rebels along the path.
The others strode behind, and occasionally spurred him into a more
rapid pace with a prick from their bayonets.

“O,---ough, mister, don't do that!  Don't, PLEASE!  You don't know
how it hurts.  I ain't got no rhinoceros skin to stand such jabs
as that.  That came purty nigh goin' clean through to my heart.”

“Skeet ahead faster, then, or the next punch'll go righ smack through
ye, fur sartin.  Ef yer skin's so tender what are ye doin' in the
army?”

They climbed the mountain laboriously, and started down on the
other side.  About midway in the descent they came upon a deserted
cabin standing near the side of the road.

“By the Lord Harry,” said one of the Rebels, “I'm a'most done clean
gin out, so I am.  I'm tireder nor a claybank hoss arter a hard
day's plowin', an' I'm ez dry ez a lime-kiln.  I motion that we
stop yere an' take a rest.  We kin put our Yank in the house thar,
an' keep him.  I wonder whar the spring is that the folks thet
lived yere got thar water from?”

“Ef I don't disremember,” said another, “this is the house where
little Pete Higgenbottom lived afore the country got ruther onhelthy
fur him on account of his partiality for other people's hosses.  I
made a little trip up yere the time I loss thet little white-faced
bay mar of pap's, an I'm purty sure the spring's over thar in the
holler.”

“Lordy, how they must 've hankered arter the fun o' totin' water to
've lugged hit clar from over tha.  I'd've moved the house nigher
the spring afore I'd've stood thet ere a month, so I would.”

“The distance to the water ortent to bother a feller thet gets
along with usin' ez little ez you do,” growled the first speaker.

“A man whose nose looks like a red-pepper pod in August, and his
shirt like a section o' rich bottom land, hain't no great reason
ter make remarks on other folks's use o' water.”

Jake plucked up some courage from the relaxation in the savage grimness
of his captors, which seemed implied by this rough pleasantry, and
with him such recuperation of spirits naturally took the form of
brassy self-assertion.

“Don't you fellers know,” he began with a manner and tone intended
to be placating, but instead was rasping and irritating, “don't you
fellers know that the best thing you can do with me is to take me
back to our people, and trade me off for one of your fellers that
they've ketched?”

“An' don't ye know thet the best thing ye kin do is to keep thet
gapin' mouth o' your'n shet, so thet the flies won't git no chance
to blow yer throat?” said the man whose nose had been aptly likened
to a ripe red-pepper pod, “an' the next best thing's fur ye to git
inter that cabin thar quicker'n blazes 'll scorch a feather, an'
stay thar without makin' a motion toward gittin' away.  Git!” and
he made a bayonet thrust at Jake that tore open his blouse and shirt,
and laid a great gaping wound along his breast.  Jake leaped into
the cabin and threw himself down upon the puncheon floor.

“Thar war none of our crowd taken,” said another of the squad, who
had looked on approvingly.  “They wuz all killed, an' the only way
to git even is ter send ye whar they are.”

Jake made another earnest effort to recall one of the prayers he
had derided in his bad boyhood.

Leaving the red-nosed man to guard the prisoner, the rest of the
Rebels started for the hollow, in search of water to cool their
burning thirst.

They had gained such a distance from the scene of the fight, and
were in such an out-of-the-way place, that the thought of being
overtaken did not obtrude itself for an instant, either upon their
minds or Jake's.

But as they came back up the hill, with a gourd full of spring water
for their companion, they were amazed to see a party of blue-coats
appear around the bend of the road at a little distance.  They
dropped the gourd of water, and yelled to the man on guard:

“Kill the Yank, an' run for yer life!” and disappeared themselves,
in the direction of the spring.

The guard comprehended the situation and the order.  He fired his
gun at Jake, but with such nervous haste as to destroy the aim,
and send the charge into the puncheon a foot beyond his intended
victim, and then ran off with all speed to join his companions.
the Union boys sent a few dropping shots after him, all of which
missed their mark.

Jake managed to recover his nerves and wits sufficiently to stagger
to the door as his comrades came up, and grasp one of the guns the
Rebels had left.

Questions and congratulations were showered upon him, but he
replied incoherently, and gasped a request for water, as if he were
perishing from thirst.  While some hunted for this, others sought
for traces of the Rebels; so he gained time to fix up a fairly
presentable story of a desperate and long-continued bayonet struggle
in which he was behaving with the greatest gallantry, although
nearly hopeless of success, when the arrival of help changed the
aspect of matters.  He had so many gaping wounds to confirm the
truth of this story, that it was implicitly believed, and he was
taken back to camp as on e of the foremost heroes of that eventful
day.  The Colonel made him a Sergeant as soon as he heard the
tale, and regretted much that he could not imitate the example of
the great Napoleon, and raise him to a commission, on the scene of
his valiant exploits.  His cot at the hospital was daily visited
by numbers of admiring comrades, to whom he repeated his glowing
account of the fight, with marked improvements in manner and detail
accompanying every repetition.

He had no desire to leave the hospital during his term of service,
but his hurts were all superficial and healed rapidly, so that
in a fortnight's time the Surgeon pronounced him fit to return to
duty.  He cursed inwardly tha officer's zeal in keeping the ranks
as full as possible, and went back to his company to find it
preparing to go into another fight.

“Hello, Jake,” said his comrades, “awful glad to see you back.  Now
you'll have a chance to get your revenge on those fellows.  There'll
be enough of us with you to see that you get a fair fight.”

“To the devil with their revenge and a fair fight,” said Jake to
himself.  That evening he strolled around to the headquarters tent,
and said to the commander of the regiment:

“Colonel, the doctor seems to think that I'm fit to return to duty,
but I don't feel all right yet.  I've a numbness in my legs, so
that I kin hardly walk sometims.  It's my old rheumatics, stirred
up by sleeping out in the night air.  I hear that the man who's
been drivin' the headquarters wagin has had to go to the hospital.
I want to be at something, even if I can't do duty in the ranks,
and I'd like to take his place till him and me gets well.”

“All right, Sergeant.  You can have the place as long as you wish,
or any other that I can give you.  I can't do too much for so brave
a man.”

So it happened that in the next fight the regiment was not gratified
by any thrilling episodes of sanguinary, single-handed combats,
between the indomitable Jake and bloodthirsty Rebels.

He had deferred his “revenge” indefinitely.





Chapter IV.  Disgrace.




For of fortune's sharp adversitie
  The worst kind of infortune is this:
A man that hath been in prosperitie,
  And it remember when it passed is.
                        -- Chaucer.


Harry Glen's perfect self-complacency did not molt a feather when
the victors returned to camp flushed with their triumph, which, in
the eyes of those inexperienced three-months men, had the dimensions
of Waterloo.  He did not know that in proportion as they magnified
their exploit, so was the depth of their contempt felt for those of
their comrades who had declined to share the perils and the honors
of the expedition with them.  He was too thoroughly satisfied with
himself and his motives to even imagine that any one could have
just cause for complaint at anything he chose to do.

This kept him from understanding or appreciating the force of the
biting innuendoes and sarcasms which were made to his very face;
and he had stood so aloof from all, that there was nobody who
cared to take the friendly trouble of telling him how free the camp
conversation was making with his reputation.

He could not help, however, understanding that in some way he had
lost caste with the regiment:  but he serenely attributed this to
mean-spirited jealousy of the superior advantages he was enjoying,
and it only made him more anxious for the coming of the time when
he could “cut the whole mob of beggars,” as Ned Burnleigh phrased
it.”

A few days more would end the regiment's term of service, and he
readily obtained permission to return him in advance.

The first real blow his confidence received was when he walked down
the one principal street of Sardis, and was forced to a perception
of the fact that there was an absence of that effusive warmth with
which the Sardis people had ever before welcomed back their young
townsman, of whose good looks and gentlemanliness they had always
been proud.  Now people looked at him in a curious way.  They turned
to whisper to each other, with sarcastic smiles and knowing winks,
as he came into view, and they did not come forward to offer him
their hands as of old.  It astonished him that nobody alluded to
the company or to anything that had happened to it.

Turning at length from the main street, he entered the lateral one
leading to his home.  As he did so, he heard one boy call out to
another in that piercing treble which boys employ in making their
confidential communications to one another, across a street,

“S-a-y-, did you know that Hank Glen 'd got back? and they say he
looks pale yet?”

“Has he?” the reply came in high falsetto, palpably tinged with that
fine scorn of a healthy boy, for anything which does not exactly
square with his young highness's ideas.  “Come back to mammy, eh?
Well, it's a pity she ever let him go away from her.  Hope she'll
keep him with her now.  He don't seem to do well out of reach of
her apron strings.”

The whole truth flashed upon him:  Envious ones had slandered him
at home, as a coward.

He walked onward in a flurry of rage.  The thought that he had done
anything to deserve criticism could not obtrude itself between the
joints of his triple-plated armor of self-esteem.

A swelling contempt for his village critics flushed his heart.

“Spiteful, little-minded country boobies,” he said to himself with
an impatient shake of his head, as if to adjust his hair, which
was his usual sign of excitement, “they've always hated me because
I was above them.  They take advantage of the least opportunity to
show their mean jealousy.”

After a moment's pause:  “But I don't care.  I'd a little rather
have their dislike than their good-will.  It'll save me a world
of trouble in being polite to a lot of curs that I despise.  I'm
going to leave this dull little burg anyhow, as soon as I can get
away.  I'm going to Cincinnati, and be with Ned Burnleigh.  There
is more life there in a day than here in a year.  After all,
there's nobody here that I care anything for, except father and
mother--and--Rachel.”

A new train of thought introduced itself at this tardy remembrance
of his betrothed.  His heat abated.  He stopped, and leaning against
a shady silver maple began anew a meditation that had occupied
his mind very frequently since that memorable night under the old
apple tree on the hill-top.

There had been for him but little of that spiritual exaltation
which made that night the one supreme one in Rachel's existence;
when the rapture of gratified pride and love blended with the
radiant moonlight and the subtle fragrance of the flowers into a
sweet symphony that would well chord with the song the stars sang
together in the morning.

He was denied the pleasure that comes from success, after harrowing
doubts and fears.  His unfailing consciousness of his own worth
had left him little doubt that a favorable answer would promptly
follow when he chose to propose to Rachel Bond, or to any other
girl, and when this came with the anticipated readiness, he could
not help in the midst of his gratification at her assent the intrusion
of the disagreeable suspicion that, peradventure, he had not done
the best with his personal wares that he might.  Possibly there
would appear in time some other girl, whom he might prefer to
Rachel, and at all events there was no necessity for his committing
himself when he did, for Rachel “would have kept,” as Ned Burnleigh
coarsely put it, when made the recipient of Harry's confidence.

Three months of companionship with Ned Burnleigh, and daily
imbibation of that young man's stories of his wonderful conquests
among young women of peerless beauty and exalted social station
confirmed this feeling, and led him to wish for at least such
slackening of the betrothal tether as would permit excursions into
a charmed realm like that where Ned reigned supreme.

For the thousandth time--and in each recurrence becoming a little
clearer defined and more urgent--came the question:

“Shall I break with Rachel?  How can I?  And what possible excuse
can I assign for it?”

There came no answer to this save the spurs with which base
self-love was pricking the sides of his intent, and he recoiled
from it--ashamed of himself, it is true, but less ashamed at each
renewed consideration of the query.

He hastened home that he might receive a greeting that would efface
the memory of the reception he had met with in the street.  There,
at least, he would be regarded as a hero, returning laurel-crowned
from the conflict.

As he entered the door his father, tall, spare and iron-gray, laid
down the paper he was reading, and with a noticeable lowering of
the temperature of his wonted calm but earnest cordiality, said
simply:

“How do you do?  When did you get in?”

“Very well, and on the 10:30 train.”

“Did all your company come?”

Harry winced, for there was something in his father's manner, more
than his words, expressive of strong disapproval.  He answered:

“No; I was unwell.  The water and the exposure disagreed with me,
and I was allowed to come on in advance.”

Mr. Glen, the elder, carefully folded the paper he was reading and
laid it on the stand, as if its presence would embarrass him in
what he was about to say.  He took off his eye-glasses, wiped them
deliberately, closed them up and hesitated for a moment, holding
them between the thumb and fore finger of one hand, before placing
them in their case, which he had taken from his pocket with the
other.

These were all gestures with which experience had made Harry
painfully familiar.  He used to describe them to his boy intimates
as “the Governor clearing for action.”  There was something very
disagreeable coming, and he awaited it apprehensively.

“Were you”--the father's cold, searching eyes rested for
an instant on the glasses in his hand, and then were fixed on his
son's face--“were you too ill the day of the fight to accompany
your command?”

Harry's glance quailed under the penetrating scrutiny, as was his
custom when his father subjected him to a relentless catechism;
then he summoned assurance and assumed anger.

“Father,” he said, “I certainly did not expect that you would join
these mean-spirited curs in their abuse of me, but now I see that---”

“Henry, you evade the question.”  The calm eyes took on a steely
hardness.  “You certainly know by this time that I always require
direct answers to my questions.  Now the point is this:  You entered
this company to be its leader, and to share all its duties with
it.  It went into a fight while you remained back in camp.  Why
was this so?  Were you too sick to accompany it?”

“I certainly was not feeling well.”

“Were you too ill to go along with your company?”


and--there--was--some--work--in--camp that--needed--to--be--done--and
there was enough without me, and--I--I--”

“That is sufficient,” said the elder man with a look of scorn that
presently changed into one of deeply wounded pride.  “Henry, I know
too well your disposition to shirk the unpleasant duties of life,
to be much surprised that, when tried by this test, you were found
wanting.  But this wounds me deeply.  People in Sardis think my
disposition hard and exacting; they think I care for little except
to get all that is due me.  But no man here can say that in all
his long life Robert Glen shirked or evaded a single duty that he
owed to the community or his fellow-men, no matter how dangerous or
disagreeable that duty might be.  To have you fail in this respect
and to take and maintain your place in the front rank with other
men is a terrible blow to my pride.”

“O, Harry, is that you?” said his mother, coming into the room at
that moment and throwing herself into her son's arms.  “I was lying
down when I heard your voice, and I dressed and hurried down as
quickly as possible.  I am so glad that you have come home all safe
and well.  I know that you'll contradict, for your poor mother's
sake, all these horrible stories that are worrying her almost to
death.”

“Unfortunately he has just admitted that those stories are
substantially true,” said the father curtly.

“I won't believe it,” sobbed his mother, “until he tells me so
himself.  You didn't, did you, back out of a fight, and let that
Bob Bennett, whose mother used to be my sewing girl, and whom I
supported for months after he was born, and his father died with
the cholera and left her nothing, by giving her work and paying
her cash, and who is now putting on all sorts of airs because
everybody's congratulating her on having such a wonderful son, and
nobody's congratulating me at all, and sometimes I almost which I
was dead.

Clearness of statement was never one of Mrs. Glen's salient
characteristics.  Nor did deep emotion help her in this regard.
Still it was only too evident that the fountains of her being were
moved by having another woman's son exalted over her own.  Her
maternal pride and social prestige were both quivering under the
blow.

Harry met this with a flank movement.

“You both seem decidedly disappointed that I did not get myself
wounded or killed,” he said.

“That's an unmanly whimper,” said his father contemptuously.

“Why, Harry, Bob Bennett didn't get either killed or wounded,” said
his mother with that defective ratiocination which it is a pretty
woman's privilege to indulge in at her own sweet will.

Harry withdrew from the mortifying conference under the plea of
the necessity of going to his room to remove the grime of travel.

He was smarting with rage and humiliation.  His panoply of conceit
was pierced for the first time since the completion of his collegiate
course sent him forth into the world a being superior, in his own
esteem, to the accidents and conditions that the mass of inferior
mortals are subject to.  Yet he found reasons to account for his
parent's defection to the ranks of his enemies.

“It's no new thing,” he said, while carefully dressing for a call
upon Rachel in the evening, “for father to be harsh and unjust to
me, and mother has one of her nervous spells, when everything goes
wrong with her.”

“Anyhow,” he continued, “there's Ned Burnleigh, who understands
me and will do me justice, and he amounts to more than all of
Sardis--except Rachel, who loves me and will always believe that
what I do is right.”

He sat down at his desk and wrote a long letter to Ned, inveighing
bitterly against the stupidity and malice of people living in small
villages, and informing him of his intention to remove to Cincinnati
as soon as an opening could be found for him there, which he begged
Ned to busy himself in discovering.

Attired in his most becoming garb, and neglecting nothing that
could enhance his personal appearance, he walked slowly up the
hill in the evening to Rachel Bond's house.  The shrinkage which
his self-sufficiency had suffered had left room for a wonderful
expansion of his affection for Rachel, whose love and loyalty were
now essential to him, to compensate for the falling away of others.
The question of whether he should break with her was now one the
answering of which could be postponed indefinitely.  There was no
reason why he should not enjoy the sweet privileges of an affianced
lover during his stay in Sardis.  What would happen afterward would
depend upon the shape that things took in his new home.

He found Rachel sitting on the piazza.  Though dressed in the deepest
and plainest black she had never looked so surpassingly beautiful.
As is usually the case with young women of her type of beauty, grief
had toned down the rich coloring that had at times seemed almost
too exuberant into that delicate shell-like tint which is the
perfection of nature's painting.  Her round white arms shone like
Juno's, as the outlines were revealed by the graceful motions which
threw back the wide sleeves.  Her wealth of silken black hair was
drawn smoothly back from her white forehead, over her shapely head,
and gathered into a simple knot behind.  Save a black brooch at
her throat, she wore no ornaments--not even a plain ring.

She rose as Harry came upon the piazza, and for a moment her face
was rigid with intensity of feeling.  This evidence of emotion went
as quickly as it came, however, and she extended her hand with calm
dignity, saying simply:

“You have returned, Mr. Glen.”

In his anxiety to so play the impassioned lover as to conceal the
recreancy he had fostered in his own heart, Harry did not notice
the coolness of this greeting.  Then, too, his self-satisfaction
had always done him the invaluable service of preventing a ready
perception of the repellant attitudes of others.

He came forward eagerly to press a kiss upon her lips, but she
checked him with uplifted hand.

“O, the family's in there, are they?” said he, looking toward the
open windows of the parlor.  “Well, what matter?  Isn't it expected
that a fellow will kiss his affianced wife on his return, and not
care who knows it?”

He pointed to the old apple-tree where they had plighted their troth
that happy night, with a gesture and a look that was a reminder of
their former meeting and an invitation to go thither again.  She
comprehended, but refused with a shudder, and, turning, motioned
him to the farther end of the piazza, to which she led the way,
moving with a sweeping gracefulness of carriage that Harry thought
had wonderfully ripened and perfected in the three months that had
elapsed since their parting.

“'Fore gad,” he said to himself.  (This was a new addition to
his expletory vocabulary, which had accrued from Ned Burnleigh's
companionship.)  “I'd like to put her alongside of one of the
girls that Ned's always talking about.  I don't believe she's got
her equal anywhere.”

Arriving at the end of the piazza he impetuously renewed his attempt
at an embrace, but her repulse was now unmistakable.

“Sit down,” she said, pointing to a chair; “I have something to
say to you.”

Harry's first thought was a rush of jealously.  “Some rascal has
supplanted me,” he said bitterly, but under his breath.

She took a chair near by, put away the arm he would have placed
about her waist, drew from her pocket a dainty handkerchief bordered
with black, and opened it deliberately.  It shed a delicate odor
of violets.

Harry waited anxiously for her to speak.

“This mourning which I wear,” she began gently, “I put on when I
received the news of your downfall.”

“My downfall?” broke in Harry hotly.  “Great heavens, you don't
say that you, too, have been carried away by this wretched village
slander?”

“I put it on,” she continued, unmindful of the interruption, “because
I suffered a loss which was greater than any merely physical death
could have occasioned.”

“I don't understand you.”

“My faith in you as a man superior to your fellows died then.  This
was a much more cruel blow than your bodily death would have been.”

“'Fore gad, you take a pleasant view of my decease--a much cooler
one, I must confess, than I am able to take of that interesting
event in my history.”

Her great eyes blazed, and she seemed about to reply hotly, but
she restrained herself and went on with measured calmness:

“The reason I selected you from among all other men, and loved you,
and joyfully accepted as my lot in life to be your devoted wife and
helpmate, was that I believed you superior in all manly things to
other men.  Without such a belief I could love no man.”

She paused for an instant, and Harry managed to stammer:

“But what have I done to deserve being thrown over in this unexpected
way?”

“You have not done anything.  That is the trouble.  You have failed
to do that which was rightfully expected of you.  You have allowed
others, who had no better opportunities, to surpass you in doing
your manly duty.  Whatever else my husband may not be he must not
fail in this.”

“Rachel, you are hard and cruel.”

“No, I am only kind to you and to myself.  I know myself too well
to make a mistake in this respect.  I have seen too many women
who have been compelled to defend, apologize, or blush for their
husband's acts, and have felt too keenly the abject misery of their
lives to take the least chance of adding myself to their sorrowful
number.  If I were married to you I could endure to be beaten by
you and perhaps love you still, but the moment I was compelled to
confess your inferiority to some other woman's husband I should
hate you, and in the end drag both of us down to miserable graves.”

“But let me explain this.”

“It would be a waste of time,” she answered coldly.  “It is sufficient
for me to know that you are convicted by general opinion of having
failed where a number of commonplace fellows succeeded.  You,
yourself, admit the justice of this verdict by tame submission
to it, making no effort to retrieve your reputation.  I can not
understand how this could be so if you had any of the qualities
that I fondly imagined you possessed in a high degree.  But this
interview is being protracted to a painful extent.  Let us say good
night and part.”

“Forever?” he stammered.

“Yes.”

She held out her hand for farewell.  Harry caught it and would have
carried it to his lips, but she drew it away.

“No; all that must be ended now,” she said, with the first touch
of gentleness that had shaded her sad, serious eyes.

“Will you give me no hope?” said Harry, pleadingly.

“When you can make people forget the past--if ever--” she said,
“then I will change this dress and you can come back to me.”

She bowed and entered the house.





Chapter V.  The Lint-scraping and Bandage-making Union.




At length I have acted my severest part:
I feel the woman breaking in upon me,
And melt about my heart:  My tears will flow.
                              -- Addison.


Rachel Bond's will had carried her triumphantly through a terrible
ordeal--how terrible no one could guess, unless he followed her
to her room after the interview and saw her alone with her agony.
She did not weep.  Tears did not lie near the surface with her.  The
lachrymal glands had none of that ready sensitiveness which gives
many superficial women the credit of deep feeling.  But when she
did weep it was not an April shower, but a midsummer tempest.

Now it was as if her intense grief were a powerful cautery which
seared and sealed every duct of the fountain of tears and left her
eyes hot and dry as her heart was ashes.

With pallid face and lips set until the blood was forced from them,
and they made a thin purplish line in the pale flesh, she walked
the floor back and forth, ever back and forth, until a half-stumble,
as she was turning in a dreary round, revealed to her that she was
almost dropping from exhaustion.

She had thought her love for Harry had received its death-blow when
her pride in him had been so rudely shattered.  But this meeting,
in which she played the part set for herself with a brave perfection
that she had hardly deemed possible, had resurrected every dear
memory, and her passion sprung into life again to mock and jeer
at her efforts to throttle it out of existence.  With him toppling
from the pedestal on which her husband must stand, she had told
herself that there was naught left but to roll a great stone against
the sepulcher in which her love must henceforth lie buried, hopeless
of the coming of any bright angle to unseal the gloomy vault.  Yet,
despite the entire approval given this by her judgment, her woman's
heart cried bitterly for a return of the joys out of which the
beauty had fled forever.

Hours passed in this wrestle with pain.  How many she did not know,
but when she came forth it was with the composure of one who had
fought the fight and won the victory, but at a cost that forbade
exultation.

---

There was one ordeal that thus far she had not been called upon to
endure.  From the day on which she had donned her sable robes to
that of Harry's return no one had ventured to speak his name in
her presence.  Even her father and mother, after the first burst
of indignation, had kept silence in pity for her suffering, and
there was that in her bearing that forbade others touching upon a
subject in her hearing that elsewhere was discussed with the hungry
avidity of village gossips masticating a fresh scandal.

But she could not be always spared thus.  She had not been so
careful of the feelings of less favored women and girls, inferior
to her in brightness, as to gain any claim for clement treatment
now, when the displacement of a portion of her armor of superiority
gave those who envied or disliked her an unprotected spot upon
which to launch their irritating little darts.

All the sewing, dorcas and mite societies of the several churches
in Sardis had been merged into one consolidated Lint-Scraping and
Bandage-Making Union, in whose enlarged confines the waves of gossip
flowed with as much more force and volume as other waves gain when
the floods unite a number of small pools into one great lake.

In other days a sensational ripple starting, say in the Episcopalian
“Dorcas,” was stilled into calmness ere it passed the calm and
stately church boundaries.  It would not do to let its existence be
even suspected by the keen eyes of the freely-censorious Presbyterian
dames, or the sharp-witted, agile-tongued Methodist ladies.

And, much as these latter were disposed to talk over the weaknesses
and foibles of their absent sisters in the confidential environments
of the Mite Society or the Sewing Circle, they were as reluctant
to expose these to the invidious criticisms of the women of the
other churches as if the discussed ones had been their sisters in
fact, and not simply through sectarian affiliation.  Church pride,
if nothing else, contributed to the bridling of their tongues, and
checking the free circulation of gossip.

“Them stuck-up Presbyterian and Episcopalian women think little
enough on us now, the land knows,” Mrs. Deborah Pancake explained
to a newly-received sister, whom she was instructing in elementary
duties.  “There's no use giving 'em more reason for looking down upon
us.  We may talk over each other's short-comings among ourselves,
private like, because the Bible tells us to admonish and watch
over each other.  But it don't say that we're to give outsiders
any chance to speak ill of our sisters-in-Christ.”

And Mrs. Euphrosyne Pursifer remarked to the latest agreeable
accession to the parish of St. Marks, with that graceful indirection
that gave her the reputation in Sardis of being a feminine Talleyrand:

“Undoubtedly the ladies in these outside denominations are very
worthy women, dear, but a certain circumspection seems advisable
in conversing with them on subjects that we may speak of rather
freely among ourselves.”

The rising fervor of the war spirit melted away most of these
barriers to a free interchange of gossip.  With the first thrill of
pleasure at finding that patriotism had drawn together those whom
the churches had long held aloof came to all the gushing impulse
to cement the newly-formed relationship by confiding to each other
secrets heretofore jealously guarded.  Nor should be forgotten the
“narrative stimulus” every one feels on gaining new listeners to
old stories.

It was so graciously condescending in Mrs. Euphrosyne Pursifer to
communicate to Mrs. Elizabeth Baker some few particulars in which
her aristocratic associates of St. Marks had grieved her by not
rising to her standard of womanly dignity and Christian duty, that
Mrs. Baker in turn was only too happy to reciprocate with a similar
confidence in regard to her intimate friends of Wesley Chapel.

It was this sudden lapsing of all restraint that made the waves of
gossip surge like sweeping billows.

And the flotsam that appeared most frequently of late on their
crests, and that was tossed most relentlessly hither and thither,
was Rachel Bond's and Harry Glen's conduct and relations to each
other.

The Consolidated Lint-scraping and Bandage-making Union was holding
a regular session, and gossip was at spring-tide.

“It is certainly queer,” said Mrs. Tufis, one of her regulation
smiles illuminating her very artificial countenance; “it is singular
to the last degree that we don't have Miss Rachel Bond among us.
She is such a LOVELY girl.  I am very, very fond of her, and her
heart is thoroughly in unison with our objects.  It would seem
impossible for her to keep away.”

All this with the acrid sub-flavor of irony and insincerity with
which an insincere woman can not help tainting even her most sincere
words.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Tabitha Grimes, with a premeditated acerbity
apparent even in the threading of her needle, into the eye of which
she thrust the thread as if piercing the flesh of an enemy with a
barb; “yes;” she pulled the thread through with a motion as if she
enjoyed its rasping against the steel.  “Rachel Bond started into
this work quite as brash as Harry Glen started into the war.  Her
enthusiasm died out about as quickly as his courage, when it came
to the actual business, and she found there was nobody to admire
her industry, or the way she got herself up, except a parcel of
married women.”

The milk of human kindness had begun to curdle in Mrs. Grimes's
bosom, at an early and now rather remote age.  Years of unavailing
struggle to convince Mr. Jason Grimes that more of his valuable
time should be devoted to providing for the wants of his family,
and less to leading the discussion on the condition of the country
in the free parliament that met around the stove in the corner
grocery, had carried forward this lacteal fermentation until it
had converted the milky fluid into a vinegarish whey.

“Well, why not?” asked Elmira Spelter, the main grief of whose life
was time's cruel inflexibility in scoring upon her face unconcealable
tallies of every one of his yearly flights over her head, “why
shouldn't she enjoy these golden days?  Youth is passing, to her
and to all of us, like an arrow from the bow.  It'd be absurd for
her to waste her time in this stuffy old place, when there are so
many more attractive ones.  It ought to be enough that those of us
who have only a few remnants of beauty left, should devote them to
this work.”

“Well,” snapped Mrs. Grimes, “your donation of good looks to the
cause--even if you give all you got--will be quite modest, something
on the widow's mite order.  You might easily obey the scriptural
injunction, and give them with your right hand without your left
knowing what was being done.”

Elmira winced under this spiteful bludgeoning, but she rallied and
came back at her antagonist.

“Well, my dear,” she said quietly, “the thought often occurs to
me, that one great reason why we both have been able to keep in the
straight and narrow path, is the entire lack of that beauty which
so often proves a snare to the feet of even the best-intentioned
women.”

It was Mrs. Grimes's turn to wince.

“A hit! a palpable hit!” laughed pretty Anna Bayne, who studied
and quoted Shakespeare.

“The mention of snares reminds me,” said Mrs. Grimes, “that I, at
least, did not have to spread any to catch a husband.”

“No,” returned Elmira, with irritating composure, “the poorer kinds
of game are caught without taking that trouble.”

“Well”--Mrs. Grimes's temper was rising so rapidly that she was
losing her usual skill in this verbal fence--“Jason Grimes, no
doubt, has his faults, as all men have; but he is certainly better
than no husband at all.”

“That's the way for you to think,” said Elmira, composedly, disregarding
the thrust at her own celibacy.  “It's very nice in you to take
so cheerful a view of it.  SOMEBODY had to marry him, doubtless,
and it's real gratifying to see one accepting the visitations of
Providence in so commendable a spirit.”

To use the language of diplomacy, the relations between these ladies
had now become so strained that a rupture seemed unavoidable.

“Heavens, will this quarrel ne'er be mended?” quoted Anna Bayne, not
all sorry that these veteran word-swordsmen, dreaded by everybody,
were for once turning their weapons on each other.

Peace-making was one of the prerogatives assumed by Mrs. Tufis, as
belonging to the social leadership to which she had elected herself.
She now hastened to check the rapidly-opening breach.

“Ladies,” she said blandly, “the discussion has wandered.  Our first
remarks were, I believe about Miss Bond, and there was a surmise
as to her reasons for discontinuing attendance upon our meetings.”

The diversion had the anticipated effect.  The two disputants
gladly quit each other, to turn upon and rend the object flung in
between them.

“Why Rachel Bond don't come here any more?” said Mrs. Grimes, with
a sniff that was one of the keenest-edged weapons in her controversial
armory.  “When you know how little likely she is to do anything
that's not going to be for her benefit in some way.  She's mighty
particular in everything, but more particular in that than in
anything else.”

“I'll admit that there is reason to suspect a strain of selfishness
in Rachel's nature,” said Anna Bayne; “but it's the only blemish
among her many good qualities.  Still, I think you do her an
injustice in attributing her absence from our meetings to purely
selfish motives.”

“Of course, we all know what you mean,” said Elmira.  “She set her
cap for Harry Glen, and played her cards so openly and boldly--”

“I should say 'shamelessly,'” interrupted Mrs. Grimes.

“Shamelessly, my dear?”  This from Mrs. Tufis, as if in mild
expostulation.

“Shamelessly,” repeated Mrs. Grimes, firmly.

“Well, so shamelessly, if you choose,” continued Elmira, “as to
incur the ill-will of all the rest of the girls--”

“Whom she beat at a game in which they all played their best,”
 interrupted Anna.

“That's an unworthy insinuation,” said Elmira, getting very red.
“At least, no one can say I played any cards for that stake.”

“Wasn't it because all your trumps and suit had been played out
in previous games?”  This from Mrs. Grimes, whose smarting wounds
still called for vengeance.

For an instant a resumption of hostilities was threatened.  Mrs.
Tufis hastened to interpose:

“There's no doubt in my mind that the poor, dear girl really took
very deeply to heart the stories that have been circulated about
Harry Glen's conduct, though there are people ready to say that she
was quite willing to play the role of the stricken one.  It really
makes her look very interesting.  Mourning and the plain style of
wearing her hair suit her very, VERY well.  I do not think I ever
saw her looking so lovely as she has lately, and I have heard quite
a number of GENTLEMEN say the same thing.

“If she'd had real spirit,” said Mrs. Grimes, “she'd have dropped
Harry Glen without all this heroine-of-a-yellow-covered-novel
demonstration, and showed her contempt of the fellow by going ahead
just as usual, pretending that his conduct was nothing to her;
but she's a deep one.  I'll venture anything she's got a well-laid
scheme, that none of us dream of.”

“Mrs. Tufis,”--it was the calm, even tones of Rachel Bond's voice
that fell upon the startled ears of the little coterie of gossipers.
She had glided in unobserved by them in the earnestness of their
debate.  “How long has she been here and what has she heard?” was
the thrilling question that each addressed to herself.  When they
summoned courage to look up at her, they saw her standing with
perfectly composed mien, her pale face bearing the pensive expression
it had worn for weeks.  With subdued and kindly manner she returned
the affectionate greetings that each bestowed on her, in imitation of
Mrs. Tufis, who was the first to recover her wits and then continued:

“Mrs. Tufis, I come to you, as president of this society, to apologize
for my absence from so many of your meetings, and to excuse myself
on the ground of indisposition.”  (Mrs. Grimes darted a significant
look at Elmira.)  “I also want to announce that, as I have determined
to join the corps of nurses for the field hospitals, which Miss Dix,
of New York, is organizing, and as I will start for the front soon,
I shall have to ask you to excuse me from any farther attendance
upon your meetings, and drop my name from your roll.”

She replied pleasantly to a flood of questions and expostulations,
which the crowd that gathered around poured upon her, and turning,
walked quietly away to her home.





Chapter VI.  The Awakening.




The nobler nature within him stirred
To life, at that woman's deed and word.
                                -- Whittier.


Deeper emotions than he had felt before in all his life of shallow
aimlessness stirred Harry Glen's bosom as he turned away from the
door which Rachel Bond closed behind her with a decisive promptness
that chorded well with her resolute composure during the interview.

This blow fell much more heavily than any that had preceded
it, because it descended from the towering height to which he had
raised his expectations of an ardent greeting from a loving girl,
eagerly watching for his return.

As was to be expected from one of his nature, he forgot entirely
his ruminations upon the advisability of discarding her, and the
difficulty he experienced in devising a plan whereby this could
be done easily and gracefully.  He only thought of himself as the
blameless victim of a woman's fickleness.  The bitter things he
had read and heard of the sex's inconstancy rose in his mind, as
acrid bile sometimes ascends in one's throat.

“Here,” he said to himself, “is an instance of feminine perfidy
equal to anything that Byron ever sneered at.  This girl, who was
so proud to receive my attentions a little while ago, and who so
gladly accepted me for her promised husband, now turns away at the
slightest cloud of disapproval falling upon me.  And to think, too,
how I have given her all my heart, and lavished upon her a love as
deep and true as ever a man gave a woman.”

He was sure that he had been so badly used as to have sufficient
grounds for turning misanthrope and woman-hater.  Thin natures are
like light wines and weak syrups in the readiness with which they
sour.

The moon had risen as it did on that eventful betrothal-night.
Again the stars had sunk from sight in the sea of silver splendor
rolling from the round, full orb.  Again the roadway down the hill
lay like a web of fine linen, bleaching upon an emerald meadow.
Again the clear waters of the Miami rippled in softly merry music
over the white limestone of their shallow bed.  Again the river,
winding through the pleasant valley, framed in gently rising
hill-sides, appeared as  great silver ribbon, decorating a mass
of heavily-embroidered green velvet.  Again Sardis lay at the foot
of the hills, its coarse and common place outlines softened into
glorious symmetry by the moonlight's wondrous witchery.

He stopped for a moment and glanced at the old apple-tree, under
which they had stood when


“Their spirits rushed together at the meeting of their lips.”


But its raiment of odorous blossoms was gone.  Instead, it bore a
load of shapeless, sour, unripened fruit.  Instead of the freshling
springing grass, at its foot was now a coarse stubble.  Instead of
the delicately sweet breath of violets and fruit blooms scenting
the evening air came the heavy, persistent perfume of tuberoses,
and the mawkish scent of gaudy poppies.

“Bah, it smells like a funeral,” he said, and he turned away and
walked slowly down the hill.  “And it is one.  My heart and all my
hopes lie buried at the foot of that old apple-tree.”

It had been suggested that much of the sympathy we lavish upon
martyrs is wanton waste, because to many minds, if not in fact to
all, there is a positive pleasure in considering oneself a martyr.
More absolute truth is contained in this than appears at the first
blush.  There are very few who do not roll under their tongues as
a sweet morsel the belief that their superior goodness or generosity
has brought them trouble and affliction from envious and wicked
inferiors.

So the honey that mingled with the gall and hysop of Harry Glen's
humiliation was the martyr feeling that his holiest affections
had been ruthlessly trampled upon by a cold-hearted woman.  His
desultory readings of Byron furnished his imagination with all
the woful suits and trappings necessary to trick himself out as a
melancholy hero.

On his way home he had to pass the principal hotel in the place,
the front of which on Summer evenings was the Sardis forum for the
discussion of national politics and local gossip.  As he approached
quietly along the grassy walk he overheard his own name used.  He
stepped back into the shadow of a large maple and listened:

“Yes, I seen him as he got off the train,” said Nels Hathaway,
big, fat, lazy, and the most inveterate male gossip in the village.
“And he is looking mighty well--yes, MIGHTY well.  I said to Tom
Botkins, here, 'what a wonderful consitution Harry Glen has, to be
sure, to stand the hardships of the field so well.'”

The sarcasm was so evident that Harry's blood seethed.  The Tim
Botkins alluded to had been dubbed by Basil Wurmset, the cynic and
wit of the village, “apt appreciation's artful aid.”  Red-haired,
soft eyed, moon-faced, round of belly and lymphatic of temperament,
his principal occupation in life was to play  fiddle in the Sardis
string-band, and in the intervals of professional engagements at
dances and picnics, to fill one of the large splint-bottomed chairs
in front of the hotel with his pulpy form, and receive the smart
or bitter sayings of the loungers there with a laught that began
before any one else's, and lasted after the others had gotten
through.  His laugh alone was as good as that of all the rest of
the crowd.  It was not a hearty, resonant laugh, like that from
the mouth of a strong-lunged, wholesome-natured man, which has the
mellow roundness of a solo on a French horn.  It was a slovenly,
greasy, convictionless laugh, with uncertain tones and ill-defined
edges.  Its effect was due to its volume, readiness, and long
continuance.  Swelling up of the puffy form, and reddening ripples
of the broad face heralded it, it began with a contagious cackle,
it deepened into a flabby guffaw, and after all the others roundabout
had finished their cachinnatory tribute it wound up with what was
between a roar and the lazy drone of a bagpipe.

It now rewarded Nels Hathaway's irony, and the rest of the loungers
joined in.  Encouraged, Nels continued, as its last echoes died
away:

“Yes, he's just as spry and pert as anybody.  He seems to have
recovered entirely from all his wounds; none of 'em have disfiggered
him any, and his nerves have got over their terrible strain.”

Tim ran promptly through all the notes in his diapason, and the
rest joined in on the middle register.

“Well, I'm not at all surprised,” said Mr. Oldunker, a bitter
States' Rights Democrat, and the oracle of his party.  “I told you
how it'd be from the first.  Harry Glen was one of them Wide-Awakes
that marched around on pleasant evenings last Fall with oil-cloth
capes and kerosene lamps.  I told you that those fellows'd be no
where when the war they were trying to bring on came.  I'm not at
all astonished that he showed himself lily-livered when he found
the people that he was willing to rob of their property standing
ready to fight for their homes and their slaves.”

“Ready to shoot into a crowd of unsuspecting men, you mean,” sneered
Basil Wurmset, “and then break their own cursed necks when they
saw a little cold steel coming their way.”

Tim came in promptly with his risible symphony.

“Well, they didn't run away from any cold steel that Harry Glen
displayed,” sneered Oldunker.

Tim's laugh was allegro and crescendo at the first, and staccato
at the close.

“You seem to forget that Capt. Bob Bennett was a Wide-Awake, too,”
 retorted Wurmset, “though you might have remembered it from his
having threatened to lick you for encouraging the boys to stone
the lamps in the procession.”

Tim cackled, gurgled and roared.

Nels Hathaway had kept silent as long as he could.  He must put
his oar into the conversational tide.

“I'd give six bits,” he said, “to know how the meeting between him
and Rachel Bond passes off.  He's gone up to the house.  The boys
seen him, all dressed up his best.  But his finery and his perfumed
hankerchiefs won't count anything with her, I can tell YOU.  She
comes of fighting stock, if ever a woman did.  The Bonds and
Harringtons--her mother's people--are game breeds, both of 'em,
and stand right on their record, every time.  She'll have precious
little traffic with a white-feathered fellow.  I think she's been
preparing for him the coldest shoulder any young feller in Sardis's
got for many a long day.”

There was nothing very funny in this speech, but a good deal of
risible matter had accumulated in Tim's diaphragm during its delivery
which he had to get rid of, and he did.

Harry had heard enough.  While Tim's laugh yet resounded he walked
away unnoticed, and taking a roundabout course gained his room.
There he remained a week, hardly coming down to his meals.  It
was a terrible week for him, for every waking hour of it he walked
through the valley of humiliation, and drank the bitter waters of
shame.  The joints of his hitherto impenetrable armor of self-conceit
had been so pierced by the fine rapier thrusts of Rachel's scorn
that it fell from him under the coarse pounding of the village
loungers and left him naked and defenseless to their blows.  Every
nerve and sense ached with acute pain.  He now felt all of his
father's humiliation, all his mother's querulous sorrow, all his
betrothed's anguish and abasement.

Thoughts of suicide, and of flying to some part of the country
where he was entirely unknown, crowded upon him incessantly.  But
with that perversity that nature seemingly delights in, there had
arisen in his heart since he had lost her, such a love for Rachel
Bond as made life without her, or without her esteem even, seem
valueless.  To go into a strange part of the country and begin
life anew would be to give her up forever, and this he could not
do.  It would be much preferable to die demonstrating that he was
in some degree worthy of her.  And a latent manly pride awakened and
came to his assistance.  He could not be the son of his proud,
iron-willed father without some transmission of that sire's
courageous qualities.  He formed his resolution:  He would stay in
Sardis, and recover his honor where he had lost it.

At the end of the week he heard the drums beat, the cannon fire,
and the people cheer.  The company had come home, and was marching
proudly down the street to a welcome as enthusiastic as if its members
were bronzed veterans returning victoriously from a campaign that
had lasted for years.

His mother told him the next day that the company had decided to
re-enlist for three years or duration of the war, and that a meeting
would be held that evening to carry the intention into execution.
When the evening came Harry walked into the town hall, dressed as
carefully as he had prepared himself for his visit with Rachel.
He found the whole company assembled there, the members smoking,
chatting with their friends, and recounting to admiring hearers
the wonderful experiences they had gone through.  The enlistment
papers were being prepared, and some of the boys who had not been
examined during the day were undergoing the surgeon's inspection
in an adjoining room.

Harry was coldly received by everybody, and winced a little under
this contrast with the attentions that all the others were given.

At last all the papers and rolls seemed to be signed, and there
was a lull in the proceedings.  Harry rose from his seat, as if to
address the meeting.  Instantly all was silence and attention.

“Comrades,” he said, in a firm, even voice, “I have come to say to
you that I feel that I made a mistake during our term of service,
and I want to apologize to you for my conduct then.  More than
this, I want to redeem myself.  I want to go with you again, and
have another chance to---”

He was interrupted by an enthusiastic shout from them all.

“Hurrah!  Bully for Lieutenant Glen!  Of couse we'll give you
another show.  Come right along in your old place, and welcome.”

There was but one dissenting voice.  It was that of Jake Alspaugh:

“No, I'll be durned if we want ye along any more.  We've no place
for sich fellers with us.  We only want them as has sand in their
craws.”

But the protest was overslaughed by the multitude of assents.  At
the first interval of silence Harry said:

“No, comrades, I'll not accept a commission again until I'm sure I
can do it credit.  I'll enlist in the company on the same footing
as the rest of the boys, and share everything with you.  Give the
lieutenancy to our gallant comrade Alspaugh, who has richly earned
it.”

The suggestion was accepted with more enthusiastic cheering,
and Harry, going up to the desk, filled out an enlistment blank,
signed it and the company roll, and retired with the surgeon for
the physical examination.  This finished, he slipped out unnoticed
and went to his home.  On his way thither he saw Rachel as she passed
a brilliantly lighted show-window.  She was in traveling costume,
and seemed to be going to the depot.  She turned her head slightly
and bowed a formal recognition.

As their eyes met he saw enough to make him believe that what he
had done met her approval.





Chapter VII.  Pomp and Circumstances of Glorious War.




                     But man, proud man,
Dressed in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
     *     *     *     *     * Plays such fantastic tricks before high
Heaven As make the angels weep, who, with our spleens, Would all
themselves laugh mortal.                          --Measure for Measure


“Abe, you remember how that man who made the speech when our
colors were presented to us talked of 'the swelling hearts of our
volunteers,' don't you?” said Kent Edwards, as he and Abe Bolton
lounged near the parade-ground one fine afternoon, shortly after
the arrival of the regiment in camp of instruction.  “You remember
that that was his favorite figure of rhetoric, and he repeated it
several times?”

“Don't know anything about figger of retterick,” growled Abe, who,
his comrades said, had the evenest temper in the regiment, “for he
was always mad.  But I do remember that he said that over several
times, with a lot o' other things without much pint to 'em, until
I thought I'd drop, I was so thirsty and tired.”

“Yes?  Well, now if you want to get a good idea of what that
expression meant, look over there.  Not only his heart swells, but
he swells all over.”

“I should think he did,” replied Abe, after a moment's inspection.
“Unless his hat has an Injy-rubber band, he'll have to git it cut
offen his head, which ought to be hooped, for it can't swell no
more without busting.”

It was Jacob Alspaugh crossing the parade ground in more than Solomonic
splendor of uniform.  His inflated form bore upon it all the blue
and tinsel prescribed by the Army Regulations for the raiment and
insignia of a First Lietenant of Infantry, with such additions as
had been suggested by his exuberant fancy.  His blue broadcloth
was the finest and shiniest.  Buttons and bugles seemed masses of
barbric gold.  From broad-brimmed hat floated the longest ostrich
feather procurable in the shops.  Shining leather boots, field-marshal
pattern, came above his knees.  Yellow gauntlets covered his massive
hands and reached nearly to his elbows, and on his broad shoulders
were great glittering epaulets--then seldom worn by anyone, and
still more rarely by volunteer officers.  He evidently disdained to
hide the crimson glories of his sash in the customary modest way,
by folding it under his belt, but had made of it a broad bandage
for his abdominal regions, which gae him the appearance of some
gigantic crimson-breasted blue-bird.  Behind him trailing, clanking
on the ground as he walked, not the modest little sword of his
rank, but a long cavalry saber, with glittering steel scabbard.  But
the sheen of gold and steel was dimmed beside the glow of intense
satisfaction with hs make-up that shone in his face.  There might
be alloy in his gleaming buttons and bullion epaulets; there was
none in his happiness.

“I feel sorry for the poor lilies of the field that he comes near,”
 sighed Kent, sympathetically.  “He is like them now, in neither
toiling nor spinning, and yet how ashamed he must make them of
their inferior rainment.”

“Faugh! it makes me sick to see a dunghill like that strutting
around in feathers that belong to game birds.”

“O, no; no game bird ever wore such plumage as that.  You must be
thinking of a peacock, or a bird-of-paradise.”

“Well, then, blast it, I hate to see a peacock hatched all at once
out of a slinking, roupy, barnyard rooster.”

“O, no; since circuses are out of the question now, we ought to
be glad of so good a substitute.  It only needs a brass band, with
some colored posters, to be a genuine grand entry, with street
parade.”

Alspaugh's triumphal march had now brought him within a few feet
of them, but they continued to lounge indifferently on the musket
box upon which they had been sitting, giving a mere nod as recognition
of his presence, and showing no intention of rising to salute.

The glow of satisfaction faded from Alspaugh's horizon, and a cloud
overcast it.

“Here, you fellers,” he said angrily, “why don't ye git up an'
saloot?  Don't ye know your business yit?”

“What business, Jake?” asked Kent Edwards, absently, paying most
attention to a toad which had hopped out form the cover of a budock
leaf, in search of insects for his supper.

Alspaugh's face grew blacker.  “The business of paying proper
respect to your officers.”

“It hasn't occured to me that I am neglecting anything in that
line,” said Kent, languidly, shifting over to recline upon his
left elbow, and with his right hand gathering up a little gravel
to flip at the toad; “but maybe you are better acquainted with our
business than we are.”

Abe contributed to the dialogue a scornful laugh, indicative of a most
heartless disbelief in his superior officer's superior intellectuality.

The dark cloud burst in storm:  “Don't you know,” said Alspaugh,
angry in every fiber, “that the reggerlations say that 'when an
enlisted man sees an officer approach, he will rise and saloot,
and remain standin' and gazin' in a respectful manner until the
officer passes five paces beyond him?'  Say, don't you know that?”

Kent Edwards flipped a bit of gravel with such good aim that it
struck the toad fairly on the head, who blinked his bright eyes in
surprise, and hopped back to his covert.  “I am really glad,” said
he, “to know that you have learned SOMETHING of the regulations.
Now, don't say another word about it until I run down to the company
quarters and catch a fellow for a bet, who wants to put up money
that you can never learn a single sentence of them.  Don't say
another word, and you can stand in with me on the bet.”

“Had your head measured since you got this idea into it?” asked
Abe Bolton, with well-assumed interest.

“If he did, he had to use a surveyor's chain,” suggested Kent,
flipping another small pebble in the direction of the toad's retreat.

Alspaugh had grown so great upon the liberal feed of the meat of
flattery, that he could hardly make himself believe that he had
heard aright, and that these men did not care a fig for himself or
his authority.  Then recovering confidence in the fidelity of their
ears, it seemed to him that such conduct was aggravated mutiny, which
military discipline demanded should receive condign punishment on
the spot.  Had he any confidence in his ability to use the doughy
weapon at his side, he would not have resisted the strong temptation
to draw his sword and make an example then and there of the contemners
of his power and magnificence.  But the culprits has shown such an
aptitude in the use of arms as to inspire his wholesome respect,
and he was very far from sure that they might not make a display
of his broadsword an occasion for heaping fresh ridicule upon him.
An opportune remembrance came to his aid:

“If it wasn't for the strcit orders we officers got yesterday not
to allow ourselves to be provoked under any circumstances into
striking our men, I'd learn you fellers mighty quick not to insult
your superior officers.  I'd bring you to time, I can tell you.
But I'll settle with you yit.  I'll have you in the guard hose
on bread and water in short meter, and then I'll learn you to be
respectful and obedient.”

“He means 'teach,' instead of 'learn,'” said Kent, apologetically,
to Abe.  “It's just awful to have a man, wearing shoulder-straps,
abuse English grammar in that way.  What's grammar done to him to
deserve such treatment?  He hasn't even a speaking acquaintance
with it.”

“I 'spose it's because grammar can't hit back.  That's the kind he
always picks on,” answered Abe.

“You'll pay for this,” shouted Alspaugh, striding off after the
Seargent of the Guard.

At that moment a little drummer appeared by the flagstaff, and beat
a lively rataplan.

“That's for dress-parade,” said Kent Edwards, rising.  “We'd better
skip right over to quarters and fall in.”

“Wish their dress-parades were in the brimstone flames,” growled
Abe Bolton, as he rose to accompany his comrade.  “All they're for
is to stand up as a background, to show off a lot of spruce young
officers dressed in fancy rigs.”

“Well,” said Kent, lightly, as they walked along, “I kind of like
that; don't you?  We make picturesque backgrounds, don't we? you
and I, especially you, the soft, tender, lithe and willowy; and
I, the frowning, rugged and adamantine, so to speak.  I think the
background business is our best hold.”

He laughed heartily at his own sarcasm, but Abe was not to be moved
by such frivolity, and answered glumly:

“O, yes; laugh about it, if you choose.  That's your way:  giggle
over everything.  But when I play background, I want it to be with
something worth while in the foreground.  I don't hanker after
making myself a foil to show off such fellers as our officers are,
to good advantage.”

“That don't bother me any more than it does a mountain to serve as
a background for a nanny goat and a pair of sore-eyed mules!”

“Yes, but the mountain sometimes has an opportunity to drop an
avalanche on 'em.”

At this point of the discussion they arrived at the company grounds,
and had scarcely time to snatch up their guns and don their belts
before the company moved out to take its place in the regimental
line.

The occasion of Lieutenant Alspaugh's elaborate personal ornamentation
now manifested itself.  By reason of Captain Bennett's absence,
he was in command of the company, and was about to make his first
appearance on parade in that capacity.  Two or three young women,
of the hollyhock order of beauty, whom he was very anxious to
impress, had been brought to camp, to witness his apotheosis into
a commanding officer.

The moment, however, that he placed himself at the head of the company
and drew sword, the chill breath of distrust sent the mercury of
his self-confidence down to zero.  It looked so easy to command
a company when some one else was doing it; it was hard when he
tried it himself.  All the imps of confusion held high revel in
his mind when he attempted to give the orders which he had conned
until he supposed he had them “dead-letter perfect.”  he felt his
usually-unfailing assurance shrivel up under the gaze of hundreds
of mercilessly critical eyes.  He managed to stammer out:

“ATTENTION, COMPANY! FORWARD, FILE RIGHT, MARCH!”

But as the company began to execute the order, it seemed to be
going just the opposite to what he had commanded, and he called
out excitedly:

“Not that way!  Not that way!  I said 'file right,' and you're
going left.”

“We are filing right,” answered some in the company.  “You're turned
around; that's what's the matter with you.”

So it was.  He had forgotten that when standing facing the men, he
must give them orders in reverse from what the movement appeared to
him.  This increased his confusion, until all his drill knowledge
seemed gone from him.  The sight of his young lady friends, clad
in masses of primary colors, stimulated him to a strong effort to
recover his audacity, and bracing himself up, he began calling out
the guide and step, with a noisy confidence that made him heard
all over the parade ground:

“Left! left! left!  Hep! hep! hep!  Cast them head and eyes to the
right!”

Trouble loomed up mountainously as he approached the line.
Putting a company into its place on parade is one of the crucial
tests of tactical proficiency.  To march a company to exactly the
right spot, with every man keeping his proper distance from his
file-leader--“twenty-eight inches from back to breast,” clear down
the column, so that when the order “front” was given, every one
turns, as if on pivot, and touches elbows with those on each side
of him, in a straight, firm wall of men, without any shambling “closing
up,” or “side-stepping” to the right or left,--to do all this at
word of command, looks very simple and easy to the non-military
spectator, as many other very difficult things look simple and easy
to the inexperienced.  But really it is only possible to a thoroughly
drilled company, held well in hand by a competent commander.  It
is something that, if done well, is simply done well, but if not
done well, is very bad.  It is like an egg that is either good or
utterly worthless.

Alspaugh seemed fated to exhaust the category of possible mistakes.
Coming on the ground late he found that a gap had been left in the
line for his company which was only barely sufficient to receive
it when it was aligned and compactly “dressed.”

In his nervousness he halted the company before it had reached the
right of the gap by ten paces, and so left about one-quarter of the
company lapping over on the one to his left.  Even this was done
with an unsightly jumble.  His confusion as to the reversal of right
and left still abode with him.  He commanded “right face” instead
of “front,” and was amazed to see the whole one hundred well-drilled
men whirl their backs around to the regiment and the commanding
officer.  A laugh rippled down the ranks of the other companies;
even the spectators smiled, and something sounded like swearing by
the Adjutant and Sergeant-Major.

Alspaugh lifted his plumed hat, and wiped the beaded perspiration
from his brow with the back of one of the yellow gauntlets.

“Order an 'about face,'” whispered the Orderly-Sergeant, whose
face was burning with shame at the awkward position in which the
company found itself.

“ABOUT--FACE!” gasped Alspaugh.

The men turned on their heels.

“Side-step to the right,” whispered the Orderly.

“Side-step to the right,” repeated Alspaugh, mechanically.

The men took short side-steps, and following the orders which
Alspaugh repeated from the whispered suggestions of the Orderly,
the company came clumsily forward into its place, “dressed,” and
“opened ranks to the rear.”  When at the command of “parade-rest,”
 Alspaugh dropped his saber's point to the ground, he did it with
the crushed feeling of a strutting cock which has been flung into
the pond and emerges with dripping feathers.

He raised his heart in sincere thanksgiving that he was at last
through, for there was nothing more for him to do during the parade,
except to stand still, and at its conclusion the Orderly would have
to march the company back to its quarters.

But his woes had still another chapter.  The Inspector-General had
come to camp to inspect the regiment, and he was on the ground.

Forty years of service in the regular army, with promotion averaging
one grade every ten years, making him an old man and a grandfather
before he was a Lieutenant-Colonel, had so surcharged Col. Murbank's
nature with bitterness as to make even the very air in his vicinity
seem roughly astringent.  The wicked young Lieutenants who served
with him on the Plains used to say that his bark was worse than
his bite, because no reasonable bite could ever be so bad as his
bark.  They even suggested calling him “Peruvian Bark,” because a
visit to his quarters was worse than a strong does of quinia.

“Yeth, that'th good,” said the lisping wit of the crowd.  “Evely
bite ith a bit, ain't it?  And the wortht mutht be a bitter, ath
he ith.”

The Colonel believed tha the whole duty of man consisted in loving
the army regulations, and in keeping their commandments.  The best
part of all virtue was to observe them to the letter; the most
abhorrent form of vice, to violate or disregard even their minor
precepts.

His feelings were continually lacerated by contact with volunteers,
who cared next to nothing for the FORM of war-making, but everything
for its spirit, and the martinet heart within him was bruised and
sore when he came upon the ground to inspect the regiment.

Alspaugh's blundering in bringing the company into line awakened
this ire from a passivity to activity.

“I'll have that dunderhead's shoulder-straps off inside of a
fortnight,” he muttered between his teeth.

The unhappy Lietenant's inability to even stand properly during the
parade, or repeat an order intensified his rage.  When the parade
was dismissed the officers, as usual, sheathed their swords, and
forming a line with the Adjutant in the center, marched forward
to teh commanding and inspecting officers, and saluted.  Then the
wrath of the old Inspector became vocable.

“What in God's name,” he roared, fixing his glance upon Alspaugh
so unmistakably that enve the latter's rainbow-clad girls, who had
crowded up closely, could not make a mistake as to the victim of
the expletives.  “What in God's name, sir,” repeated the old fellow
with purpling face, “do you mean by bringing your company on to the
ground in that absurd way, sir?  Did you think, sir, that it was a
hod of brick--with which I have no doubt you are most familiar--that
you could dump down any place and any how, sir?  Such misconduct
is simply disgraceful, sir, I'd have you know.  Simply disgraceful,
sir.”

He paused for breath, but Alspaugh had no word of defense to offer.

“And what do you mean, sir,” resumed the Inspector, after inflating
his lungs for another gust, “what in the name of all the piebald
circus clowns that ever jiggered around on sawdust, do you mean
by coming on parade dressed like the ringmaster of a traveling
monkey-show, sir?  Haven't you any more idea of the honor of wearing
a United States sword--the noblest weapon on earth, sir--than to
make yourself look like the drum-major of a band of nigger minstrels,
sir!  A United States officer ought to be ashamed to make a damned
harlequin of himself, sir.  I'd have you to understand that most
distinctly, sir!”

The Inspector's stock of breath, alas, was not so ample as in the
far-off days when his sturdy shoulders bore the modest single-bar,
instead of the proud spread eagle of the present.  Even had it been,
the explosive energy of his speech would have speedily exhausted
it.  Compelled to stop to pump in a fresh supply, the Colonel of
the regiment took advantage of the pause to whisper in his ear:

“Don't be too rough on him, please.  He's a good man but green.
Promoted from the ranks for courage in action.  First appearance
on parade.  He'll do better if given a chance.”

The Inspector's anger was mollified.  Addressing himself to all
the officers, he continued in a milder tone:

“Gentlemen, you seem to be making progress in acquiring a knowledge
of your duties, though you have a world of things yet to learn.
I shall say so in my report to the General.  You can go to your
quarters.”

The line of officers dissolved, and the spectators began to melt
away.  Alspaugh's assurance rose buoyantly the moment that the
pressure was removed.  He raised his eyes from the ground, and
looked for the young ladies.  They had turned their backs and were
leaving the ground.  He hastened after them, fabricating as he
walked an explanation, based on personal jealousy, of the Inspector's
treatment of him.  He was within a step of overtaking them when he
heard one say, with toss of flaunting ribbons, and hoidenish giggle:

“Did you EVER see ANY-body wilt as Alspaugh did when old
Bite-Your-Head-Off-In-a-Minute was jawing him?  It was so awfully
FUNNY that I just thought I SHOULD DIE.”

The sentence ended with the picturesque rapid CRESCENDO employed
by maidens of her type in describing a convulsive experience.

“Just didn't he,” joined in another.  “I never saw ANY-thing so
funny in all my BORN DAYS.  I was AFRAID to look at either one of
YOU; I knew if I DID I would BURST RIGHT OUT laughing.  I couldn't've
HELPED it--I know I COULDN'T, if I'd'a knowed I'd'a DIED the next
MINUTE.”

“This would seem to be a pretty good time to drop the fellow,”
 added the third girl, reflectively.

Alspaugh turned and went in another direction.  At the 9 o'clock
roll-call he informed the company that the Inspector was well
pleased with its appearance on parade.





Chapter VIII.  The Tedium of Camp.




      And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding. --Henry V.


To really enjoy life in a Camp of Instruction requires a peculiar
cast of mind.  It requires a genuine liking for a tread-mill round
of merely mechanical duties; it requiers a taste for rising in the
chill and cheerless dawn, at the unwelcome summons of “reveille,”
 to a long day filled with a tiresome routine of laborious drills
alternating with tedious roll-calls, and wearisome parades and
inspections; it requires pleased contentment with walks continually
cut short by the camp-guard, and with amusements limited to rough
horse-play on the parade-ground, and dull games of cards by sputtering
candles in the tent.

As these be tastes and preferences notably absent from the mind of
the average young man, our volunteers usually regard their experience
in Camp of Instruction as among the most unpleasant of their war
memories.

These were the trials that tested Harry Glen's resolution sorely.
When he enlisted with the intention of redeeming himself, he
naturally expected that the opportunity he desired would be given
by a prompt march to the field, and a speedy entrance into an
engagement.  He nerved himself strenuously for the dredful ordeal of
battle, but this became a continually receding point.  The bitter
defeat at Bull Run was bearing fruit in months of painstaking
preparation before venturing upon another collision.

Day by day he saw the chance of retrieving his reputation
apparently more remote.  Meanwhile discouragements and annoyances
grew continually more plentiful and irksome.  He painfully learned
that the most disagreeable part of war is not the trial of battle,
but the daily sacrifices of personal liberty, tastes, feelings and
conveniences involved in camp-life, and in the reduction of one's
cherished individuality to the dead-level of a passive, obedient,
will-less private soldier.

“I do wish the regiment would get orders to move!” said almost hourly
each one of a half-million impatient youths fretting in Camps of
Instruction through the long Summer of 1861.

“I do wish the regiment would get orders to move!” said Harry Glen
angrily one evening, on coming into the Surgeon's tent to have his
blistered hands dressed.  he had been on fatigue duty during the
day, and the Fatigue-Squad had had an obstinate struggle with an
old oak stump, which disfigured the parade-ground, and resisted
removal like an Irish tenant.

“I am willing--yes, I can say I am anxious, even--to go into battle,”
 he continued, while Dr. Paul Denslow laid plasters of simple cerate
on the abraded palms, and then swathed them in bandages.  “Anything
is preferable to this chopping tough stumps with a dull ax, and
drilling six hours a day while the thermometer hangs around the
nineties.”

“I admit that there are things which would seem pleasanter to a young
man of your temperament and previous habits,” said the Surgeon,
kindly.  “Shift over into that arm-stool, which you will find easier,
and reat a little while.  Julius, bring in that box of cigars.”

While Julius, who resembled his illustrious namesake as little
in celerity of movement as he did in complexion, was coming, the
Surgeon prepared a paper, which he presented to Harry, saying:

“There, that'll keep you off duty to-morrow.  After that, we'll
see what can be done.”

Julius arrived with the cigars as tardily as if he had had to cross
a Rubicon in the back room.  Two were lighted, and the Surgeon
settled himself for a chat.

“Have you become tired of soldier-life?” asked he, studying Harry's
face for the effect of the question.

“I can not say that I have become tired of it,” said Harry, frankly,
“because I must admit that I never had the slightest inclination
to it.  I had less fancy for becoming a soldier than for any other
honorable pursuit that you could mention.”

“Then you only joined the army--”

“From a sense of duty merely,” said Harry, knocking the ashes from
his cigar.

“And the physical and other discomforts now begin to weight nearly
as much as that sense of duty?”

“Not at all.  It only seems to me that there are more of them than
are absolutely essential to the performance of that duty.  I want
to be of service to the country, but I would prefer that that
service be not made unnecessarily onerous.”

“Quite natural; quite natural.”

“For example, how have the fatigues and pains of my afternoon's
chopping contributed a particle toward the suppression of the
rebellion?  What have my blistered hands to do with the hurts of
actual conflict?”

“Let us admit that the connection is somewhat obscure,” said Doctor
Denslow, philosophically.

“It is easier for you, than for me, to view the matter calmly.  Your
hands are unhurt.  I am the galled jade whose withers are wrung.”

“Body and spirit both bruised?” said the Surgeon, half reflectively.

Harry colored.  “Yes,” he said, rather defiantly.  “In addition to
desiring to serve my country, I want to vindicate my manhood from
some aspersions which have been cast upon it.”

“Quite a fair showing of motives.  Better, perhaps, than usual,
when a careful weighing of the relative proportions of self-esteem,
self-interest and higher impulses is made.”

“I am free to say that the discouragements I have met with are very
different, and perhaps much greater than I contemplated.  Nor can
I bring myself to belived tha they are necessary.  I am trying to
be entirely willing to peril life and limb on the field of battle,
but instead of placing me where I can do this, and allowing me to
concentrate all my energies upon that object, I am kept for months
chafing under the petty tyrannies of a bullying officer, and
deprived of most of the comforts that I have heretofore regarded
as necessary to my existence.  What good can be accomplished by
diverting forces which should be devoted to the main struggle into
this ignoble channel?  That's what puzzles and irritates me.”

“It seems to be one of the inseperable conditions of the higher
forms of achievement that they require vastly more preparation for
them than the labor of doing them.”

“That's no doubt very philosophical, but it's not satisfactory,
for all that.”

“My dear boy, learn this grand truth now:  That philosophy is never
satisfactory; it is only mitigatory.  It consists mainly in saying
with many fine words:  'What can't be cured must be endured.'”

“I presume that is so.  I wish, though, that by the mere syaing
so, I could make the endurance easier.”

“I can make your lot in the service easier.”

“Indeed! how so?”

“By having you appointed my Hospital Steward.  I have not secured
one yet, and the man who is acting as such is so intemperate that
I feel a fresh sense of escape with every day that passes without
his mistaking the oxalic axid for Epsom salts, to the destruction
of some earnest but constipated young patriot's whole digestive
viscera.

“If you accept this position,” continued the Surgeon, flinging away
his refractory cigar in disgust, and rising to get a fresh one,
“you will have the best rank and pay of any non-commissioned officer
in the regiment; better, ineed, than that of a Second Lieutenant.
You will have your quarters here with me, and be compelled
to associate with no one but me, thus reducing your disagreeable
companions at a single stroke, to one.  And you will escape finally
from all subserviency to Lieutenant Alspaugh, or indeed to any
other officer in the regiment, except your humble servant.  As to
food, you will mess with me.”

“Those are certainly very strong inducements,” said Harry, meditating
upon the delightfulness of relief from the myriad of rasping little
annoyances which rendered every day of camp-life an infliction.

“Yes, and still farther, you will never need to go under fire, or
expose yourself to danger of any kind, unless you choose to.”

Harry's face crimsoned to the hue of the western sky where the sun
was just going down.  He started to answer hotly, but an understanding
of the Surgeon's evident kindness and sincerity interposed to deter
him.  He knew there was no shaft of sarcasm hidden below this plain
speech, and after a moment's consideration he replied:

“I am very grateful, I assure you, for your kindness in this
matter.  I am strongly tempted to accept your offer, bu there are
still stronger reasons why I should decline it.”

“May I ask your reasons?”

“My reasons for not accepting the appointment?”

“Yes, the reasons which impel you to prefer a dinner of bitter
herbs, under Mr. Alspaugh's usually soiled thumb, to a stalled ox
and my profitable society,” said the Surgeon, gayly.

Harry hesitated a moment, and then decided to speak frankly.  “Yes,”
 he said, “your kindness gives you the right to know.  To not tell
you would show a lack of gratitude.  I made a painful blunder before
in not staying unflinchingly with my company.  The more I think of
it, the more I regret it, and the more I am decided not to repeat
it, but abide with my comrades and share their fate in all things.
I feel that I no longer have a choice in the matter; I must do it.
But there goes the drum for roll-call.  I must go.  Good evening,
and very many thanks.”

“The young fellow's no callow milksop, after all,” said the Surgeon
Denslow, as his eyes followed Harry's retreating form.  “His gristle
is hardening into something like his stern old father's backbone.”





Chapter IX.  On the March.




“He smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the Captains and the shouting.”
 -- Job.


The weary weeks in Camp of Instruction ended with the Summer.
September had come, and Nature was hanging out crimson battle-flags
every-where--on the swaying poppy and the heavy-odored geranium.
The sumach and the sassafras wore crimson signals of defiance, and
the maples blazed with the gaudy red, yellow and orange of warlike
pomp.

The regiment made its first step on Kentucky soil with a little bit
of pardonable ostentation.  Every one looked upon it as the real
beginning of its military career.  When the transport was securely
tied up at the wharf, the Colonel mounted his horse, drew his sword,
placed himself at the head of the regiment, and gave the command
“Forward.”  Eleven hundred superb young fellows, marching four
abrest, with bayonets fixed, and muskets at “right shoulder shift,”
 strode up the bank after him and went into line of battle at the
top, where he made a short soldierly speech, the drums rolled, the
colors dipped, the men cheered, and the band played “Star-spangled
Banner” and “Dixie.”

Three years later the two hundred survivors of this number
returning from their “Veteran furlough,” without a band and with
their tattered colors carefully cased, came off a transport at the
same place, without uttering a word other than a little grumbling
at the trouble of disposing of some baggage, marched swiftly and
silently up the bank, and disappeared before any one fairly realized
that they were there.  So much had Time and War taught them.

“Now our work may be said to be fairly begun.”  said the Colonel,
turning from the contemplation of his regiment, and scanning
anxiously the tops of the distant line of encircling hills, as if
he expected to see there signs of the Rebels in strong force.  All
the rest imitated his example, and studied the horizon solicitously.
“And I expect we shall have plenty of it!” continued the Colonel.

“No doubt of that,” answered the Major.  “They say the Rebels are
filling Kentucky with troops, and gonig to fight for every foot of
the Old Dark and Bloody Ground.  I think we will have to earn all
we get of it.”

“To-day's papers report,” joined in Surgeon Denslow, “that General
sherman says it will take two hundred thousand troops to redeem
Kentucky.”

“Yes,” broke in the Colonel testily, “and the same papers agree in
pronouncing Sherman crazy.  But no matter how many or how few it
takes, that's none of our affair.  We've got eleven hundred good
men in ranks, and we're going to do all that eleven hundred good
men can do.  God Almighty and Abe Lincoln have got to take care of
the rest.”

It will be seen that the Colonel was a very practical soldier.

“First think we know, the Colonel will be trying to make us 'leven
hundred clean out 'leven thousand Rebs,” growled Abe Bolton.

“Suppose the Colonel should imagine himself another Leonidas,
and us his Spartan band, and want us to die around him, and start
another Thermopylae down her in the mountains, some place,” suggested
Kent Edwards, “you would cheerfully pass in your checks along with
the rest, so as to make the thing an entire success, wouldn't you?”

“The day I'm sent below, I'll take a pile of Rebs along to keep me
company,” answered Abe, surlily.

Glen, standing in the rear of his company in his place as file-closer,
listened to these words, and saw in the dim distance and on the
darkling heights the throngs of fierce enemies and avalanches of
impeding dangers as are likely to oppress the imagination of a young
soldier at such unfavorable moments.  The conflict and carnage seemed
so imminent that he half expected it to begin that very night, and
he stiffened his sinews for the shock.

Lieutenant Alspaugh also heard, studied over the unwelcome
possibilities shrouded in the gathering gloom of the distance, and
regretted that he had not, before crossing the Ohio, called the
Surgeon's attention to some premonitory symptoms of rheumatism,
which he felt he might desire to develop into an acute attack in
the event of danger assuming an unpleasant proximity.

But as no Rebels appeared on the sweeping semi-circle of hills that
shut in Convington on the south, he concluded to hold his disability
in abeyance, by a strong effort of the will, until the regiment
had penetrated farther into the enemy's country.

For days the regiment marched steadily on through the wonderfully
lovely Blue Grass Region, toward the interior of the State, without
coming into the neighborhood of any organized body of the Rebels.

Glen's first tremors upon crossing the Ohio subsided so as to
permit him to thoroughly enjoy the beauties of the scenery, and
the pleasures of out-door life in a region so attractive at that
season of the year.

The turnpike, hard and smooth as a city pavement, wound over
and around romantic hills--hills crowned with cedar and evergreen
laurel, and scarred with cliffs and caverns.  It passed through
forests, aromatic with ripening nuts and changing leaves, and glorious
in the colors of early Autumn.  Then its course would traverse farms
of gracefully undulating acres, bounded by substantial stone-walls,
marked by winding streams of pure spring water, centering around
great roomy houses, with huge outside chimneys, and broad piazzas,
and with a train of humble negro cabins in the rear.  The horses
were proud stepping thoroughbreds, the women comely and spirited,
the men dignified and athletic, and all seemed well-fed and
comfortable.  The names of the places along the route recalled to
Harry's memory all he had ever read of the desperate battles and
massacres and single-handed encounters of Daniel Boone and his
associates, with the Indians in the early history of the country.

“This certainly seems an ideal pastoral land--a place where one
would naturally locate a charming idyl or bucolic love-story!”
 he said one evening, to Surgeon Paul Denslow, after descanting at
length upon the beauties of the country which they were “redeeming”
 from the hands of the Rebels.

“Yes, answered Dr. Denslow, “and it's as dull and sleepy and
non-progressive as all those places are where they locate what you
call your idyls and pastorals!  These people haven't got an idea
belonging to this century, nor do they want one.  They know how to
raise handsome girls, distil good whisky, and breed fast horses.
This they esteem the end of all human knowledge and understanding.
Anything moer is to them vanity and useless vexation of spirit.”

At last the regiment halted under the grand old beeches and hickories
of teh famous Camp Dick Robinson, in the heart of the Blue Grass
Region.  In this most picturesque part of the lovely Kentucky River
Valley they spent the bright days of October very delightfully.

Nature is as kindly and gracious in Central Kentucky as in any part
of the globe upon which her sun shines, and she seemed to be on
her best behavior, that she might duly impress the Northern visitors.

The orchards were loaded with fruit, and the forest trees showered
nuts upon the ground.  In every field were groups of persimmon trees,
their branches bendingunder a burden of luscious fruit, which the
frost had coated with sheeny purple outside, and made sweeter than
fine wine within.  Over all bent softly brilliant skies, and the
bland, bracing air was charged with the electricity of life and
happiness.

It was the very poetry of soldiering, and Harry began to forget
the miseries of life in  a Camp of Instruction, and to believe that
there was much to be enjoyed, even in the life of an enlisted man.

“This here air or the apple-jack seems to have a wonderfully improving
effect on Jake Alspaugh's chronic rheumatics,” sneered Abe Bolton.

It was a sunny afternoon.  Bolton and Kent Edwards were just ouside
of the camp lines, in the shade of a grand old black walnut, and
had re-seated themselves to finsih devouring a bucketful of lush
persimmons, after having reluctantly risen from that delightful
occupation to salute Lieutenant Alspaugh, as he passed outward in
imposing blue and gold stalwarthood.

“I've been remarking that myself,” said Kent, taking out a handful
of the shining fruit, and deliberately picking the stems and dead
leaves from the sticky sides, preparatory to swallowing it.  “He
hasn't had an attack since we thought those negroes and teams on
the hills beyond Cynthiana was John Morgan's Rebel cavalry.”

“Yes,” continued Abe, helping himself also the mellow date-plums,
“his legs are so sound now that he is able to go to every frolic
in the country for miles around, and dance all night.  He's going
to the Quartermaster's now, to get a horse to ride to a dance and
candy-pulling at that double log-house four miles down the Harrodsburg
Pike.  I heard him talking to some other fellows about it when I
went up with the squad to bring the rations down to the company.”

“Seems to em, come to think of it, that I HAVE heard of some
rheumatic symptoms recently.  Remember that a couple of weeks ago
Pete Sanford got a bullet through his blouse, that scraped his
ribs, don't you?”

“Yes,” said Abe, spitting the seeds out from a mouthful of honeyed
pulp.

“Well, the boys say that Jake went to a candy-pulling frolic down
in the Cranston settlement, and got into a killing flirtation with
the prettiest girl there.  She was taken with his brass buttons,
and his circus-horse style generally, but she had another fellow
that it didn't suit so well.  He showed his disapproval in a way
that seems to be the fashion down here; that is, he 'laid for'
Jake behind a big rock with a six-foot deer rifle, but mistook Pete
Sanford for him.”

“The dunderhead's as poor a judge of men as he's marksman.  He's
a disgrace to Kentucky.”

“At all events it served as a hint, which Alspaugh did not
fail to take.  Since that time there has been two or three dances
at Cranston's, but every time Jake has had such twinges of his
rheumatism that he did not think it best to 'expose himself to the
night air,' and go with the boys.”

“O!---ouw!---wh-i-s-s-s-sh!” sputtered Abe, spitting the contents
of his mouth out explosively, while his face was contorted as if
every nerve and muscle was being twisted violently.

“Why, what is the matter, Abe?” asked Kent, in real alarm.  “Have
you swallowed a centipede or has the cramp-colic griped you?”

“No!  I hain't swallowed no centerboard, nor have I the belly-ache--blast
your chucklehead,” roared Abe, as he sprang to his feet, rushed
to the brook, scooped up some water in his hands, and rinsed his
mouth out energetically.

“Well, what can it be, then?  You surely ain't doing all that for
fun.”

“No, I ain't doing it for fun,” shouted Abe, angrier still; “and
nobody but a double-and twisted idiot would ask such a fool question.
I was paying so much attention to your dumbed story that I chewed
up a green persimmon--one that hadn't been touched by the frost.
It's puckered my mouth so that I will never get it straight again.
It's worse than a pound of alum and a gallon of tanbark juice mixed
together.  O, laugh, if you want to--that's just what I'd expect
from you.  That's about all the sense you've got.”

---

There was enough excitement in camp to prevent any danger of ennui.
The probability of battle gave the daily drills an interest that
they never could gain in Ohio.  The native Rebels were numerous
and defiant, and kept up such demonstrations as led to continual
apprehensions of an attack.  New regiments came in constantly,
and were received with enthusiasm.  Kentucky and East Tennessee
Loyalists, tall, gaunt, long-haired and quaint-spoken, but burning
with enthusiasm for the Government of their fathers, flocked to the
camp, doffed their butternut garb, assumed the glue, and enrolled
themselves to defend the Union.

At length it became evident that the Rebel “Army of Liberation”
 was really about crossing the Cumberland Mountains to drive out
the “Yankees” and recover possession of Kentucky for the Southern
Confederacy.

Outposts were thrown out in all directions to gain the earlies
possible intelligence of the progress of the movement, and to make
such resistance to it as might be possible.  One of these outposts
was stationed at Wildcat Gap, an inexpressibly wild and desolate
region, sixty miles from Camp Dick Robinson, where the road entering
Kentucky from Tennessee at Cumberland Gap crosses the Wildcat range
of mountains.

One day the startling news reached camp that an overwhelming
Rebel force under Gen. Zollicoffer was on the eve of attacking the
slender garrison of Wildcat Gap.  The “assembly” was sounded, and
the regiment, hastily provided with rations and ammunition, was
hurried forward to aid in the defense of the threatened outpost.

Nature, as if in sympathy with the gathering storm of war, ceased
her smiling.  The blue, bending skies were transformed intoa scowling,
leaden-visaged canopy, from which fell a chill incessant rain.

When the order to prepare for the march came, Glen, following the
example of his comrades, packed three days' cooked rations in his
haversack, made his blankets into a roll, tieing their ends together,
threw them scarf-fashion over his shoulder, and took his accustomed
place as file-closer in the rear of his company.  He was conscious
all the time, though he suffered no outward sign to betray the fact,
that he was closely watched by the boys who had been with him in
Western Virginia, and who were eager to see how he would demean
himself in this new emergency.

He was shortly ordered to assist in the inspection of cartridge-boxes
and the issuing of cartridges, adn the grim nature of the errand
they were about to start upon duly impressed itself upon his mind
as he walked down the lines in the melancholy rains, examined each
box, and gave the owner the quantity of cartridges required to make
up the quota of forty rounds per man.

Those who scrutinized his face as he passed slowly by, saw underneath
the dripping eaves of his broad-brimmed hat firm-set lines about
his mouth, and a little more luminous light in his eyes.

“Harry Glen's screwing his courage to the sticking point.  He's
bound to go through this time,” said Kent Edwards.

“The more fool he,” answered Abe Bolton, adjusting his poncho so
as to better protect his cartridges and rations from the rain.  “If
he wanted to play the warrior all so bold why didn't he improve
his opportunities in West Virginia, when it was fine weather and
he only had three months to do it in?  Now that he's in for three
years it will be almighty strange if he can't find a pleasanter
time to make his little strut on the field of battle than in this
infernal soak.”

“I have seen better days than this, as the tramp remarked who had
once been a bank cashier,” murmured kent, tightening the tompion
in his musket-muzzle with a piece of paper, the better to exclude
the moisture, and wrapping a part of the poncho around the lock
for the same purpose.  “Where is that canteen?”

“It's where it'll do you no good until you need it much worse'n you
do now.  O, I know you of old, Mr. Kent Edwards,” continued Abe,
with that deep sarcasm, which was his nearest approach to humor.
“I may say that I've had the advantages of an intimate acquaintance
with you for years, and when I trust you with a full canteen of
apple-jack at the beginning of such a march as this'll be, I'll
be ready to enlist in the permanent garrison of a lunatic asylum,
I will.  This canteen ony holds three pints; that's great deal
less'n you do.  It's full now, and you're empty.  Fill up some place
else, and tomorrow or next day, when you'd give a farm for a nip,
this'll come in mighty handy.”

The Hospital Steward approached, and said:

“Captain, the Surgeon presents his compliments and requests that you
send four men to convey your First Lieutenant Alspaugh to comfortable
quarters which have been prepared for him in the hospital barracks.
His rheumatic trouble has suddenly assumed an acute form--brought
on doubtless by the change in the weather--and he is suffering
greatly.  Please instruct the men to be very careful carrying him,
so as to avoid all unnecessary pain, and also all exposure to the
rain.  He will have a good room in the hospital, with a fire in
it, and every attention, so that you need have no fears concerning
him.”

“I never had,” said Kent, loud enough to be heard all over the
right wing of the company.

“I have,” said Abe.  “There's every danger in the world that he'll
get well.”

Away the regiment marched, through the dismal rain, giong as fast
as the heavily laden men could be spurred onward by the knowledge
of their comrades' imminent need.

It was fearful hard work even so long as the pike lasted, and they
had a firm, even foundation for their feet to tread upon.  But the
pike ended at Crab Orchard, and then they plunged into the worst
roads that the South at any time offered to resist the progress
of the Union armies.  Narrow, tortuous, unworked substitutes for
highways wound around and over steep, rocky hills, through miry
creek bottoms, and over bridgeless streams, now so swollen as to
be absolutely unfordable by less determined men, starting on a less
urgent errand.

For three weary, discouraging days they pressed onward through the
dispiriting rain and over all the exhausting obstacles.  On the
morning of the fourth they reached the foot of the range in which
Wildcat Gap is situated.  They were marching slowly up the steep
mountain side, their soaked garments clinging about their weary
limbs and clogging their footsteps.  Suddenly a sullen boom rolled
out of the mist that hung over the distant mountain tops.

Every one stopped, held their breaths, and tried to check the
beating of their hearts, that they might hear more.

They needed not.  There was no difficulty about hearing the succeeding
reports, which became every instant more distinct.

“By God, that's cannon!” said the Colonel.  “They're attacking our
boys.  Throw off everything, boys, and hurry forward!”

Overcoats, blankets, haversacks and knapsacks were hastily pied,
and the two most exhausted men in each company placed on guard over
them.

Kent and Abe did not contribute their canteen to the company pile.
But then its weight was much less of an impediment than when they
left Camp Dick Robinson.

They employed the very brief halt of the regiment in swabbing out
the barrels of their muskets very carefully, and removing the last
traces of moisture from the nipples and hammers.

“At last I stand a show of getting some return from this old piece
of gas-tube for the trouble it's been to me,” said Kent Edwards,
as he ran a pin into the nipple to make assurance doubly sure that
it was entirely free.  “Think of the transportation charges I have
against it, for the time I have lugged it around over Ohio and
Kentucky, to say nothing of the manual labor and the mental strain
of learning and prectising 'present arms,' 'carry arms,' 'support
arms,' and such military monkey-shines under the hot sun of last
Summer!”

He pulled off the woolen rag he had twisted around the head of the
rammer for a swab, wiped the rammer clean and bright and dropped
it into the gun.  It fell with a clear ring.  Another dextrous
movement of the gun sent it flying into the air.  Kent caught it as
it came down and scrutinized its bright head.  He found no smirch
of dirt or dampness.  “Clean and clear as a whistle inside,” he
said, approvingly.  “She'll make music that our Secession friends
will pay attention to, though it may not be as sweet to their ears
as 'The Bonnie Blue Flag.'”

“More likely kick the whole northwest quarter section of your
shoulder off when you try to shoot it,” growled Abe, who had been
paying similar close attention to his gun.  “If we'd had anybody
but a lot of mullet-heads for officers we'd a'been sent up here
last week, when the weather and the roads were good, and when we
could've done something.  Now our boys'll be licked before we can
get where we can help 'em.”

Glen leaned on his musket, and listening to the deepening roar of
battle, was shaken by the surge of emotions natural to the occasion.
It seemed as if no one could live through the incessant firing
the sound of which rolled down to them.  To go up into it was
to deliberately venture into certain destruction.  Memory made a
vehement protest.  He recalled all the pleasant things that life
had in store for him; all that he could enjoy and accomplish; all
that he might be to others; all that others might be to him.  Every
enjoyment of the past, every happy possibility of the future took
on a more entrancing roseatenesss.

Could he give all this up, and die there on the mountain top, in
this dull, brutal, unheroic fashion, in the filthy mud and dreary
rain, with no one to note or care whether he acted courageously or
otherwise?

It did not seem that he was expected to fling his life away like a
dumb brute entering the reeking shambles.  His youth and abilities
had been given him for some other purpose.  Again palsying fear
and ignoble selfishness tugged at his heart-strings, and he felt
all his carefully cultivated resolutions weakening.

“A Sergeant must be left in command of the men guarding this
property,” said the Colonel.  The Captain of Company A will detail
one for that duty.”

Captain Bennett glanced from one to another of his five Sergeants.
Harry's heart gave a swift leap, with hope that he might be ORDERED
to remain behind.  Then the blood crimsoned his cheeks, for the
first time since the sound of the firing struck his ears; he felt
that every eye in the Company was upon him, and that his ignoble
desire had been read by all in his look of expectancy.  Shame came
to spur up his faltering will.  He set his teeth firmly, pulled
the tompion out of his gun, and flung it away disdainfully as if he
would never need it again, blew into the muzzle to see if the tube
was clear, and wiped off the lock with a fine white handkerchief--one
of the relics of his by-gone elegance--which he drew from the breast
of his blouse.

“Sergeant Glan--Sergeant Glancey will remain,” said the Captain
peremptorily.  Glancey, the Captain knew, was the only son and
support of a widowed mother.

“Now, boys,” said the Colonel in tones that rang like bugle notes,
“the time has come for us to strike a blow for the Union, and for
the fame of the dear old Buckeye State.  I need not exhort you to
do your duty like men; I know you too well to think that any such
words of mine are at all necessary.  Forward! QUICK TIME! MARCH!”

The mountain sides rang with the answering cheers from a thousand
throats.

The noise of the battle on the distant crest was at first in separate
bursts of sound, as regiment after regiment came into position and
opened fire.  The intervals between these bursts had disappeared,
and it had now become a steady roar.

A wild mob came rushing backward from the front.

“My God, our men are whipped!” exclaimed the young Adjutant in
tones of Anguish.

“No, no,” said Captain Bennett, with cheerful confidence.  “These
are only the camp riff-raff, who run whenever so much as a cap is
burst near them.”

So it proved to be.  There were teamsters upon their wheel-mules,
cooks, officers' servants, both black and white, and civilian
employees, mingled with many men in uniform, skulking from their
companies.  Those were mounted who could seize a mule anywhere,
and those who could not were endeavoring to keep up on foot with
the panic-stricken riders.

All seemed wild with one idea:  To get as far as possible from the
terrors raging around the mountain top.  They rushed through the
regiment and disordered its ranks.

“Who are you a-shovin', young fellow--say?” demanded Abe Bolton,
roughly collaring a strapping hulk of a youth, who, hatless, and
with his fat cheeks white with fear came plunging against him like
a frightened steer.

“O boys, let me pass, and don't go up there!  Don't!  You'll all be
killed.  I know it, I'm all the one of my company that got away--I
am, really.  All the rest are killed.”

“Heavens! what a wretched remnant, as the dry-goods man said, when
the clerk brought him a piece of selvage as all that the burglars
had left of his stock of broadcloth,” said Kent Edwards.  “It's
too bad that you were allowed to get away, either.  You're not a
proper selection for a relic at all, and you give a bad impression
of your company.  You ought to have thought of this, and staid up
there and got killed, and let some better-looking man got away,
that would have done the company credit.  Why didn't you think of
this?”

“Git!” said Abe, sententiously, with a twist in the coward's
collar, that, with the help of an opportune kick by Kent, sent him
sprawling down the bank.

“Captain Bennett,” shouted the Colonel angrily, “Fix bayonets there
in front, and drive these hounds off, or we'll never get there.”

A show of savage-looking steel sent the skulkers down a side-path
through the woods.

The tumult of the battle heightened with every step the regiment
advanced.  A turn in the winding road brought them to an opening
in the woods which extended clear to the summit.  Through this the
torrent of noise poured as when a powerful band passes the head
of a street.  Down this avenue came rolling the crash of thousands
of muskets fired with the intense energy of men in mortal combat,
the deeper pulsations of the artillery, and even the firece yells
of the fighters, as charges were made or repulsed.

Glen felt the blood settle around his heart anew.

“Get out of the road and let the artillery pass!  Open up for the
artillery!” shouted voices from the rear.  Everybody sprang to the
side of the road.

There came a sound of blows rained upon horses bodies--of shouts
and oaths from exited drivers and eager officers--of rushing wheels
and of ironed hoofs striking fire from the grindng stones.  Six
long-bodied, strong-limbed horses, their hides reeking with sweat,
and their nostrils distended with intense effort, tore past,
snatching after them, as if it were a toy, a gleaming brass cannon,
surrounded by galloping cannoneers, who goaded the draft horses
on with blows with the flats of their drawn sabers.  Another gun,
with its straining horses and galloping attendants, and another,
and another, until six great, grim pieces, with their scres of
desperately eager men and horses, had rushed by toward the front.

It was a sight to stir the coldest blood.  The excited infantry
boys, wrought up to the last pitch by the spectacle, sprang back
into the road, cheered vociferously, and rushed on after the battery.

Hardly had the echoes of their voices died away, when they heard
the battery join its thunders to the din of the fight.

Then wounded men, powder-stained, came straggling back--men with
shattered arms and gashed faces and garments soaked with blood from
bleeding wounds.

“Hurrah, boys!” each shouted with weakened voice, as his eyes
lighted up at sight of the regiment, “We're whipping them; but
hurry forward!  You're needed.”

“If you ain't pretty quick,” piped one girl-faced boy, with a pensive
smile, as he sat weakly down on a stone and pressed a delicate hand
over a round red spot that had just appeared on the breast of his
blouse, “you'll miss all the fun.  We've about licked 'em already.
Oh!--”

Abe and Kent sprang forward to catch him, but he was dead almost
before they could reach him.  They laid him back tenderly on the
brown dead leaves, and ran to regain their places in the ranks.

The regiment was now sweeping around the last curve between it and
the line of battle.  The smell of burning powder that filled the
air, the sight of flowing blood, the shouts of teh fighting men,
had awakened every bosom that deep-lying KILLING instinct inherited
from our savage ancestry, which slumbers--generally wholly
unsuspected--in even the gentlest man's bosom, until some accident
gives it a terrible arousing.

Now the slaying fever burned in every soul.  They were marching with
long, quick strides, but well-closed ranks, elbow touching elbow,
and every movement made with the even more than the accuracy of a
parade.  Harry felt himself swept forward by a current as resistless
as that which sets over Niagara.

They came around the little hill, and saw a bank of smoke indicating
where the line of battle was.

“Let's finish the canteen now,” said Kent.  “It may get bored by
a bullet and all run out, and you know I hate to waste.”

“I suppose we might as well drink it,” assented Abe--the first time
in the history of the regiment, that he agreed with anybody.  “We
mayn't be able to do it in ten minutes, and it would be too bad to
've lugged that all the way here, just for some one else to drink.”

An Aide, powder-grimed, but radiant with joy, dashed up.  “Colonel,”
 he said, “you had better go into line over in that vacant space
there, and wait for orders; but I don't think you will have anything
to do, for the General believes that the victory is on, and the
Rebels are in full retreat.”

As he spoke, a mighty cheer rolled around the line of battle, and
a band stationed upon a rock which formed the highest part of the
mountain, burst forth with the grand strains of “Star-spangled
Banner.”

The artillery continued to hurl screaming shot and shell down into
the narrow gorge, through which the defeated Rebels were flying
with mad haste.





Chapter X.  The Mountaineer's Revenge.




And if we do but watch the hour,
There never yet was human power
Which could evade, if unforgiven,
The patient search and vigil long
Of him who treasures up a wrong.
                             --Byron.


Harry Glen's first feeling when he found the battle was really over,
was that of elation that the crisis to which he had looked forward
with so much apprehension, had passed without his receiving any
bodily harm.  This was soon replaced by regret that the long-coveted
opportunity had been suffered to pass unimproved, and still another
strong sentiment--that keen sense of disappointment which comes
when we have braced ourselves up to encounter an emergency, and it
vanishes.  There is the feeling of waste of valuable accumulated
energy, which is as painful as that of energy misapplied.

Still farther, he felt sadly that the day of his vindication had
been again postponed over another weary period of probation.

All around was intense enthusiasm, growing stronger every instant.
It was the first battle tha the victors had been engaged in, and
they felt the tumultuous joy that the first triumph brings to young
soldiers.  It was the first encounter upon the soil of Kentucky;
it was the first victory between the Cumberland Mountains and the
Mississippi River, and the loss of the victors was insignificant,
compared with that of the vanquished.

The cold drench from the skies, the dreary mud--even the dead and
wounded--were forgotten in the jubilation at the sight of the lately
insolent foe flying in confusion down the mountain side, recking
for nothing so much as for personal safety.

The band continued to play patriotic airs, and the cannon to thunder
long after the last Rebel had disappeared in the thick woods at
the bottom of the gloomy gorge.

A detail of men and some wagons were sent back after the regiment's
baggage, and the rest of the boys, after a few minutes survey of
the battle-field, were set to work building fires, cooking rations
and preparing from the branches and brush such shelter as could be
made to do substitute duty for the tents left behind.

Little as was Harry's normal inclination to manual labor, it was
less than ever now, with these emotions struggling in his mind,
and leaving his comrades hard at work, he wandered off to where
Hoosier Knob, a commanding eminence on the left of the battle-field
seemed to offer the best view of the retreat of the forces of
Zollicoffer.  Arriving there, he pushed on down the slope to where
the enemy's line had stood, and where now were groups of men in
blue uniforms, searching for trophies of the fight.  In one place
a musket would be found; in another a cap with a silver star, or a
canteen quaintly fashioned from alternate staves of red and white
cedar.  Each “find” was proclaimed by the discoverer, and he was
immediately surrounded by a group to earnestly inspect and discuss
it.  It was still the first year of the war; the next year “trophies”
 were left to rot unnoticed on the battle-fields they covered.

Harry took no interest in relic-hunting, but walked onward toward
another prominence that gave hopes of a good view of the Rebels.
The glimpses he gained from this of the surging mass of fugitives
inflamed him with the excitement of the chase--of the most exciting
of chases, a man-hunt.  He forgot his fears--forgot how far behind
he was leaving all the others, and became eager only to see more
of this fascinating sight.  Before he was aware of it, he was three
or four miles from the Gap.

Here a point ran boldly down from the mountain into the valley,
and ended in a bare knob that overlooked the narrow creek bottom,
along which the beaten host was forging its way.  Harry unhesitatingly
descended to this, and stood gazing at the swarming horde below.
It was a sight to rivet the attention.  The narrow level space
through which the creek meandered between the two parrallel ranges
of heights was crowded as far as he could see with an army which
defeat had degraded to a demoralized mob.  All semblance of military
organization had well-nigh disappeared.  Horsemen and footmen,
infantry, cavalry and artillery, officers and privates, ambulances
creaking under their load of wounded and dying, ponderous artillery
forges, wagons loaded with food, wagons loaded with ammunition,
and wagons loaded with luxuries for the delectation of the higher
officers,--all huddled and crowded together, and struggled forward
with feverish haste over the logs, rocks, gullies and the deep
waters of the swollen stream, and up its slippery banks, through
the quicksands and quagmires which every passing foot and wheel
beat into a still more grievous obstacle for those that followed.
Hopelessly fagged horses fell for the last time under the merciless
blows of their frightened masters, and added their great bulks to
the impediments of the road.

The men were sullen and depressed--cast down by the wretchedness
of earth and sky, and embittered against their officers and each
other for the blood uselessly shed--oppressed with hunger and
weariness, and momentarily fearful that new misfortunes were about to
descend upon them.  In brief, it was one of the saddest spectacles
that human history can present:  that of a beaten and disorganized army
in full retreat, and an army so new to soldiership and discipline
as to be able to make nothing but the worst out of so great a
calamity--it was a rout after a repulse.

Nearly all of the passing thousands were too much engrossed in
the miseries of their toilsome progress to notice the blue-coated
figure on the bare knob above the road.  But the rear of the fugitives
was brought up by a squad of men moving much more leisurely, and
with some show of order.  They did not plunge into the mass of
men and animals and vehicles, and struggle with them in the morass
which the road had now become, but deliberately picked their way
along the sides of the valley where the walking was easier.  They
saw Harry, and understood as soon as they saw, who he was.  Two or
three responded to their first impulse, and raising their guns to
their shoulders, fired at him.  A bullet slapped against the rock
upon which he was partially leaning, and fell at his feet.  Another
spattered mud in his face, and flew away, singing viciously.

At the reports the fear-harrassed mob shuddered and surged forward
through its entire length.

The companions of those who fired seemed to reproach them with angry
gestures, pointing to the effect upon the panicky mass.  Then the
whole squad rushed forward toward the hill.

Deadly fear clutched Harry Glen's heart as the angry notes of the
bullets jarred on his senses.  Then pride and the animal instinct
of fighting for life flamed upward.  So swiftly that he was scarcely
conscious of what he was doing he snatched a cartridge from the box,
tore its end between his teeth, and rammed it home.  He replaced
the ramrod in its thimbles with one quick thrust, and as he raised
his eyes from the nipple upon which he had placed the cap, he saw
that the Rebel squad had gained the foot of the knoll and started
up its side.  He raised teh gun to fire, but as he did so he heard
a voice call out from behind him:

“Skeet outen thar!  Skeet outen thar!  Come up heah, quick!”

Harry looked in the direction of the voice.  He saw a tall,
slender, black-haired man standing in the woods at the upper edge
of the cleared space.  He was dressed in butternut jeans, and looked
so much like the Rebels in front that Harry thought he was one of
them.  The stranger noticed his indecision, and called out again
still more peremptorily:

“Skeet outen thar, I tell ye!  Skeet outen thar!  Come up heah.
I'm a friend--I'm Union.”

His rifle came to his face at the same instant, and Harry saw
the flame and white smoke puff from it, and the sickening thought
flashed into his mind that the shot was fired at him, and that he
would feel the deadly ball pierce his body!  Before he could more
than formulate this he heard the bullet pass him with a screech,
and strike somewhere with a plainly sharp slap.  Turning his head
he saw the leading Rebel stagger and fall.  Harry thre his gun up,
with the readiness acquired in old hunting days, and fired at the
next of his foes, who also fell!  The other Rebels, as they came
up, gathered around their fallen comrades.

Harry ran back to where the stranger was, as rapidly as the clinging
mud and the steep hillside would permit him.

“Purty fa'r shot that,” said the stranger, setting down the heavy
rifle he was carefully reloading, and extending his hand cordially
as Harry came panting up.  “That's what I call mouty neat shooting--knock
yer man over at 150 yards, down hill, with that ole smooth-bore,
and without no rest.  The oldest han' at the business couldn't've
done no better.”

Harry was too much agitated to heed the compliment to his markmanship.
He looked back anxiously and asked:

“Are they coming on yet?”

“Skacely they hain't,” said the stranger, with a very obvious sneer.
“Skacely they hain't comin' on no more.  They've hed enuff, they
hev.  Two of their best men dropt inter blue blazes on the first
jump will take all the aidge off ther appetite for larks.  I know
'em.”

“But they will come on.  They'll pursue us.  They'll never let us
go now,” said Harry, reloading his gun with hands trembling from
the exertion and excitement.

He was yet too young a soldier to understand that his enemy's fright
might be greater than his own.

“Nary a time they won't,” said the stranger, derisively.  “Them
fellers are jest like Injuns; they're red-hot till one or two gits
knocked over, an' then they cool down mouty suddent.  Why, me an'
two others stopt the whole of Zollicoffer's army for two days by
shootin' the officer in command of the advance-guard jest ez they
war a-comin' up the hill this side of Barboursville.  Fact!  They'd
a' been at Wildcat last Friday ef we hedn't skeered 'em so.  They
stopt an' hunted the whole country round for bushwhackers afore
they'd move ary other step.”

“But who are you?” asked Harry, looking again at his companion's
butternut garb.

“I'm called Long Jim Forner, an' I've the name o' bein' the pizenest
Union man in the Rockassel Mountains.  Thar's a good s'tifkit o'
my p'litical principles” (pointing with his thumb to where lay the
men who had felln under their bullets).  Harry looked again in that
direction.  Part of the squad were looking apprehensively toward
hiim, as if they feared a volley from bushwhackers concealed near
him, and others were taking from the bodies of the dead the weapons,
belts, and other articles which it was not best to leave for the
pursuers, and still others were pointing to the rapidly growing
distance between them and main body, apparently adjuring haste in
following.

The great mental and bodily strain Harry had undergone since he
had first heard the sound of cannon in the morning at the foot of
Wildcat should have made him desperately weary.  But the sight of
the man falling before his gun had fermented in his blood a fierce
intoxication, as unknown, as unsuspected before as the passion of
love had been before its first keen transports thrilled his heart.
Like that ecstacy, this fever now consumed him.  All fear of harm
to himself vanished in its flame.  He had actually slain one enemy.
Why not another?  He raised his musket.  The mountaineer laid his
hand upon it.

“No,” he said, “that's not the game to hunt.  They'll do when thar's
nothin' better to be had, but now powder an' lead kin be used to
more advantage.  Besides they're outen range o' your smooth-bore
now.  Come.”

As Fortner threw his rifle across his shoulder Harry looked at it
curiously.  It had a long, heavy, six sided barrel, with a large
bore, double triggers, and a gaily striped hickory ramrod in its
thimbles.  The stock, of fine, curly rock-maple, was ornamented with
silver stars and crescents, and in the breech were cunning little
receptacles for tow and patches, and other rifle necessaries, each
closed by a polished silver cover that shut with a snap.  It was
evidently the triumph of some renowned kentucky gunsmith's skill.

The mountaineer's foot was on the soil he had trodden since childhood,
and Harry found it quite difficult to keep pace with his strong,
quick stride.  His step landed firm and sure on the sloping surfaces,
where Harry slipped or shambled.  Clinging vines and sharp briers
were avoided without an apparent effort, where every one grasped
Harry, or tore his face and hands.

The instinct of the wolf or the panther seemed to lead Fortner by
the shortest courses through the pathless woods to where he came
unperceived close upon the flank of the mass of harassed fugitives.
Then creeping behind a convenient tree with the supple lightness
of the leopard crouching for a spring, he scanned with eager eyes
the mounted officers within range.  Selecting his prey he muttered:

“'Tain't HIM, but he'll hev to do, THIS time.”

The weapon rang out sharply.  The stricken officer threw up his
sword arm, his bridle arm clutched his saddle-pommel, as if resisting
the attempt of Death to unhorse him.  Then the muscles all relaxed,
and he fell into he arms of those who had hurried to him.

Harry fired into the mass the next instant; a few random shots
replied, and another impetus of fear spurred the mob onward.

Fortner and Harry sped away to another point of interception, where
the same scene was repeated, and then to another, and then to a
third, Fortner muttering after each shot his disappointment at not
finding the one whom he anxiously sought.

When they hurried away the third time they were compelled to make
a wide circuit, for the little valley suddenly broadened out into
a considerable plain.  Upon this the long-drawn-out line of fugitives
gathered in a compact, turmoiling mass.

“That's Little Rockassel Ford,” said Fortner, pointing with his
left hand to the base of the mountain that rose steeply above the
farther side of the commotion.  “That's Rockassel Mountain runnin'
up thar inter the clouds.  The Little Rockassel River runs round
hits foot.  That's what's a-stoppin' 'em.  They'll hev a turrible
time gittin' acrost hit.  Hit's mouty hard crossin' at enny time,
but hit's awful now, fur the Rockassel's boomin'.  The big rains
hev sent her up kitin', an' hit's now breast-deep thar in the Ford.
We'll git round whar we kin see hit all.”

Another wide detour to keep themselves in the concealment of the
woods brough Fortner and Harry out upon an acclivity that almost
overhung the ford, and those gathered around it.  The two Unionists
crawled cautiously through the cedars and laurel to the very edge
of the cliff and looked down upon their enemies.  They were so near
that everything was plainly visible, and the hum of conversation
reached their ears.  They could even hear the commands of the officers
vainly trying to restore order, the curses of the teamsters upon
their jaded animals, the ribald songs of the few whose canteens
furnished them with forgetfulness of defeat, and contempt for the
surrounding misery.

All the flooding showers which had been falling upon hundreds of
square miles of precipitous mountin sides were now gorging through
the crooked, narrow throat of the Little Rockcastle.  The torrent
filled the ragged banks to the brim, and in their greedy swirl
undermined and tore from there logs, great trees, and even rocks.

This wasthe barrier that stayed the flight of the fugitive throng,
and it was this that they strove to put between thm and the presumed
revengeful victors.

On the bank, field and line officers labored to calm their men and
restore organization.  It was in vain that they pointed out that
there had been no pursuit thus far, and the unlikelihood of there
being one.  When did Panic yield to Reason?  In those demoralized
ears the thunder of the cannon at Wildcat, the crash of the bursting
shells, and the deadly whistle of bullets still rang louder than
any words officers could speak.

The worst frightened crowded into the stream in a frenzy, and
struggled wildly with the current that swept their feet off the
slimy limestone bottom, with the logs and trees dashing along like
so many catapult-bolts, and with the horses and teams urged on
by men more fear-stricken still.  On the steep slope on the other
side glimmered numbers of little fires where those who were lucky
enough to get across were warming and drying themselves.

“Heavens!” said Harry with an anticipatory shudder, “if our men
should come up, the first cannon shot would make half these men
drown themselves in trying to get away.”

Fortner heeded him not.  The mountaineer's eyes were fixed upon a
tall, imperious looking man, whose collar bore the silver stars of
a Colonel.

“He has found his man at last,” said Harry, noticing his companion's
attitude, and picking up his own gun in readiness for what might
come.

Fortner half-cocked his rifle, took from its nipple the cap that
had been tehre an hour and flung it away.  He picked the powder
out if the tube, replaced it with fresh from his horn, selected
another cap carefully, fitted it on the nipple, and let the hammer
down with the faintest snap to force it to its place.

His eyes had the look of a rattlesnake's when it coils for a
spring, and his breast swelled out as if he was summoning all his
strength.  He stepped forward to a tree so lightly that there came
no rustle from the dead leaves he trod upon.  Harry took his place
on the other side of the tree, and cocked his musket.

So close were they to hundreds of Rebels with arms in their hands,
that it seemed simply an invitation to death to call their attention.

Fortner turned and waved Harry back as he heard him approach, but
Glen had apparently exhausted all his capacity for fearing, in the
march upon Wildcat, and he was now calmly desperate.

The Colonel rode out from the throng toward the level spot at the
base of the ledge upon which the two were concealed.  The horse he
bestrode was a magnificent thoroughbred, whose fine action could
not be concealed, even by his great fatigue.

“Go and find Mars,” said the Colonel to an orderly, “and tell him
to build a fire against that rock there, and make us some coffee.
We will not be able to get across the ford before midnight.”  The
orderly rode off, and the Colonel dismounted and walked forward
with the cramped gait of a man who had been long in the saddle.

Still louder yells arose from the ford.  A powerful horse, ridden
by an officer who was trying to force his way across, had slipped
on the river's glassy bedstones, in the midst of a compact throng,
and carried many with it down into the deep water below the crossing.

The Colonel's lip curled with contempt as he continued his walk.

A sharp little click sounded from Fortner's rifle.  He had set the
hair trigger.

He stepped out clear of the tree, and gave a peculiar whistle.  The
Colonel started as he heard the sound, looked up, saw who uttered
it, and instinctly reached his hand back to the holster for a
revolver.

Down would scarcely have been ruffled by Fortner's light touch upon
the trigger.

Fire flamed from the rifle's muzzle.

The Colonel's haughty eyes became sterner than ever.  The holster
was torn as he wrenched the revolver out.  A clutch at the mane,
and he fell forward on the wet brown leaves--dead!

Dumb amazement fille dthe horse's great eyes; he stretched out his
neck and smelled his lifeless master inquiringly.

A shot from Harry's musket, fifty from the astounded Rebels, and the
two Unionists sped away unhurt into the cover of the dark cedars.





Chapter XI.  Through the Mountains and the Night.




God sits upon the Throne of Kings,
And Judges unto judgement brings:
    Why then so long
    Maintain your wrong,
And favor lawlesss things?

Defend the poor, the fatherless;
Their crying injuries redress:
    And vindicate
    The desolate,
Whom wicked men oppress.
   --George Sandy's Paraphrase of Psalm XXXII.


Fortner and Glen were soon so far away from the Ford that the
only reminder of its neighborhood were occasional glimpses, caught
through rifts in he forest, of the lofty slope of Rockcastle Mountain,
now outlined in the gathering darkness by twinkling fires, which
increased in number, and climbed higher towards the clouds as fast
as the fugitives succeeded in struggling across the river.

“That's a wonderful sight,” said Harry, as they paused on a summit
to rest and catch breath.  “It reminds me of some of the war scenes
in Scott, or the Illiad.”

“Hit looks ter me like a gineral coon-hunt,” said Fortner, “on'y
over thar hit's the coons, an' not the hunters, that hev the torches.
I wish I could put a bum-shell inter every fire.”

“You are merciless.”

“No more'n they are.  They've ez little marcy ez a pack o' wolves
in a sheep-pen.”

“Well,” continued Fortner, meditatively, “Ole Rockassel's gittin'
a glut to-night.  She'd orten't ter need no more now fur a hundred
yeahs.”

“I don't understand you,” said Harry.

“Why, they say thet the Rockassel hez ter hev a man every Spring
an' Fall.  The Injuns believed hit, an' hit's bin so ever sence the
white folks come inter the country.  Last Spring hit war the turn
o' the Fortner kin to gi'n her a man, an' she levied on a fust
cousin o' mine--a son o' Aunt Debby Brill.  But less jog on; we've
got a good piece fur ter go.”

It was now night--black and starless, and the dense woods through
which they were traveling made the darkness thick and impenetrable.
But no check in Fortner's speed hinted at any ignorance of the course
or encountering of obstacles.  He continued to stride forward with
the same swift, certain step as in the day time.  But for Harry,
who could see nothing but his leader's head and shoulders, and,
whose every effort was required to keep these in sight, the journey
was full of painful toil.  The relaxation from the intense strain
manifested itself in proportion as they seemed to recede from the
presence of the enemy, and his spirits flagged continually.

In the daylight the brush and briers had been annoying and hurtful,
and the roughness of the way very trying.  Now the one was wounding
and cruel; the other made every step with his jaded limbs a torture.
With the low spirits engendered by the great fatigue, came a return
of the old fears and tremors.  The continual wails of the wildcats
roundabout filled him with gloomy forebodings.  Every hair of
his head stood stiffly up in mortal terror when a huge catamount,
screaming like a fiend, leaped down from a tree, and confronted
them for an instant with hideously-gleaming yellow eyes.

“Cuss-an'-burn the nasty varmint!” said Fortner angrily, snatching
up a pine knot from his feet and flinging it at the beast, which
vanished into the darkness with another curdling scream.

“Don't that man know what fear is?” wondered Harry, ignorant that
the true mountaineer feels toward these vociferous felidae about
the same contempt with which a plainsman regards a coyote.

At length Fortner slackened his pace, and began to move with caution.

“Are we coming upon the enemy again?” asked Harry, in a loud whisper,
which had yet a perceptible quaver in it.

“No,” answered Fortner, “but we're a-comin' ter what is every bit
an' grain ez dangersome.  Heah's whar the path winds round Blacksnake
Clift, an' ye'll hev ter be ez keeful o' your footin' ez ef ye war
treadin' the slippery ways o' sin.  The path's no wider 'n a hoss's
back, an' no better ter walk on.  On the right hand side hit's
several rods down ter whar the creek's tearin' 'long like a mad
dog.  Heah hit now, can't ye?”

For some time the roar of the torrent sweeping the gorge had filled
Harry's ears.

“Ye want ter walk slow,” continued Fortner, “an' feel keefully with
yer foot every time afore ye sot hit squar'ly down.  Keep yer left
hand a-feelin' the rocks above yer, so's ter make shore all the
time thet ye're close ter 'em.  'Bout half way, thar's a big break
in the path.  Hit's jess a long step acrost hit.  Take one step
arter I say thet I'm acrost; the feel keerfully with yer left foot
fur the aidge o' the break, an' then step out ez long ez ye kin
with yer right.  That'll bring ye over.  Be shore o' yer feet, an
ye'll be all right.”

Harry trembled more than at any time before.  They were already on
the path around the steep cliff.  The darkness was inky.  The roar
of the waters below rose loudly--angrily.  The wails of the wildcats
behind, overhead and in front of them, made it seem as if the
sighing pines and cedars were inhabited with lost spirits shrieking
warnings of impending disaster.

Harry's foot came down upon a boulder which turned under his weight.
He regained his balance with a start, but the stone toppled over.
He listened.  There were scores of heart-beats before it splashed
in the water below.

“Not so much as a twig between here and eternity,” he said to
himself, with a shudder.  Then aloud:  “Can't we stay here, some
place, and not go along there to-night?”

The roar of the water drowned his voice before it reached Fortner's
ears, and Harry, obeying the instinct to accept leadership, followed
the mountaineer tremblingly.

In a little while he felt--more than saw--Fortner stop, adjust
his feet, and make a long stride forward with one of them.  Glen
collected himself for the same effort.  He had need of all of his
resolution, for the many narrow escapes which he had made from
slipping into the hungry torrent, had shaken every nerve.

“I'm over,” called out Fortner.  “Ye try hit now.”

Harry balanced his gun so as to embarrass him the least, and
carefully felt with his left foot for the edge of the chasm.  The
catamount announced his renewed presence by a vindictive scream.
The clouds parted just enough to let through a rift of gray light,
but it fell not upon the brink of the black gap in the path.  It
showed for an instant the whirlpool, with fragments of tree trunks,
of ghastly likeness to drowned human bodies, eddying dizzily around.

“Come on,” called out Fortner, impatiently.

Harry stepped out desperately.  For a mental eternity he hung in air.
His hands relaxed and his gun dropped with a crash and a splash.
Then his foot touched the other side with nervous doubtfulness.
It slipped, and he felt himself falling--falling into all that he
feared.  Fortner grasped his collar with a strong hand, and dragged
him up against the rocky wall of the path.

“Thar, yer all right,” he said, panting with the exertion, “but
hit wuz a mouty loud call for ye.  Gabriel's ho'n couldn't've made
a much mo' powerful one.”

“I've lost my gun,” said Harry, regretfully, as soon as he could
compose himself.

“Cuss-an'-burn the blasted ole smooth-bore,” said Fortner,
contemptuously.  “Don't waste no tear on that ole kick-out-behind.
We'll go 'long 'tween Wildcat an' the Ford, an' pick up a wagon-load
uv ez good shooters ez thet clumsy chunk o' pot-metal wuz.  Shake
yourself together.  We've on'y got a mile or so ter go now.”

In Harry's condition, the “mile or so” seemed to be stretching out
a long ways around the globe, and he began to ask himself how near
he was to the much-referred-to “heart of the Southern Confederacy.”

At length a little fading toward gray of the thick blackness, to
that they had emerged from the heavy woods into more open country.
Harry thought they were come to fields, but he could see nothing,
and without remark plodded painfully after his leader.

Suddenly a large pack of dogs immediately in front of them broke
the stillness with a startling diapason, ranging from the deep
bass of the mastiff to the ringing bark of the fox-hounds.  Mingled
with this was the sound of the whole pack rushing fiercely forward.
Fortner stopped in his tracks so abruptly that Glen stumbled against
him.  The mountaineer gave the peculiar whistle he had uttered
at the Ford.  The rush ceased instantly.  The deep growls of the
mastiffs and bull-dogs stopped likewise; only the hounds and the
shrill-voiced young dogs continued barking.

The darkness was rent by a long narrow lane of light.  A door had
been opened in a tightly-closed house, just beyond the dogs.

“Down, Tige!  Git out, Beauty!” said Forstner, imperiously.  “Lay
down, Watch!  Quiet Bruno!”

The clamors of the gang changed to little yelps of welcome.

“Is that you, Jim?” inquired a high-pitched but not unpleasant
voice, from the door.

“Yes, Aunt Debby,” answered Fortner, “an' I hev some one with me.”

As the two approached, surrounded by the fawning dogs, a slender,
erect woman appeared in the doorway, holding above her head, by its
nail and chain, one of the rude iron lamps common in the houses of
the South.

“Everything all right, Aunt Debby?” asked Fortner, as, after entering,
he turned from firmly securing the door, by placing across it a
strong wooden bar that rested in the timbers on either side.

“Yes, thank God!” she said with quiet fervor.  She stepped with
graceful freedom over the floor, and hung the lamp up by thrusting
the nail into a crack in one of the logs forming the walls of the
room.  “An' how is hit with ye?” she asked, facing Fortner, with
her large gray eyes eloquent with solicitude.

“O, ez fur me, I'm jes ez sound ez when I left heah last week, 'cept
thet I'm tireder 'n a plow mule at night, an' hongrier nor a b'ar
thet's lived all Winter by suckin' hits paws.”

“I s'pose y' air tired an' hongry; ye look hit,” said the woman,
with a compassionate glance at Harry, who had sunk limpy into a
chair before the glowing wood-fire that filled up a large part of
the end of the room.

“Set down by the fire,” she continued, “an' I'll git ye some pone
an' milk.  Thar's nothin' better ter start in on when yer rale
empty.”  She went to a rude cupboard in the farther part of the
room, whence the note of colliding crockery soon gave information
that she was busy.

Fortner took a bunch of tow from his pouch, and with it wiped off
every particle of dampness from the outside of his rifle, after
which he laid the gun on two wooden hooks above the fireplace, and
hung the accouterments on deer horns at its breech.

“Pull off yer shoes an' toast yer feet,” he said to Harry.  “The
fire'll draw the tiredness right out.”

Harry's relaxed fingers fumbled vainly with the wet and obstinate
shoe-strings.  Aunt Debby came up with a large bowl of milk in each
hand, and a great circular loaf of corn-bread under her arm.  She
placed her burden upon the floor, and with quick, deft fingers
loosened the stubborn knots without an apparent effort, drew off
the muddy shoes and set them in a dark corner near the fireplace
before Harry fairly realized that he had let a woman do this humble
office for him.  The sight and smell of food aroused him from the
torpor of intense fatigue, and he devoured the homely fare set before
him with a relish that he had never before felt for victuals.  As
he ate his senses awakened so that he studied his hostess with
interest.  Hair which the advancing years, while bleaching to
a snowy white had still been unable to rob of the curling waves
of girlhood, rippled over a broad white brow, sober but scarcely
wrinkled; large, serious but gentle gray eyes, and a small, firm
mouth, filled with even white teeth were the salient features of a
face at once resolute, refined and womanly.  Long, slender hands,
small feet, covered with coarse but well-fitting shoes, a slight,
erect figure, suggestive of nervous strength, and clad in a shapely
homespun gown stamped her as a superior specimen of the class of
mountaineer woman to which she belonged.

“Heah's 'nuther pone, honey,” she said to Fortner, as she handed
both of them segments of another disk of corn-bread, to replace
that which they had ravenously devoured.  “An' le' me fill yer
bowls agin.  Hit takes a powerful sight o' bread an' milk ter do
when one's rale hongry.  But 'tain't like meat vittels.  Ye can't
eat 'nuff ter do ye harm.”

She took from its place behind the rough stones that formed the
jam of the fireplace a rude broom, made by shaving down to near
its end long slender strips from a stick of pliant green hickory,
then turning these over the end and confining them by a band into
an exaggerated mop or brush.  With this she swept back from the
hearth of uneven stones the live coals flung out by the fire.

“Thar's some walnut sticks amongst thet wood,” she said as she
replaced the hearth-broom, “an' they pops awful.”

From a pouch-like basket, made of skilfully interwoven hickory
strips, and hanging against the wall, she took a half-finished
stocking and a ball of yarn.  Drawing a low rocking-chair up into
the light, she seated herself and began knitting.

As he neared the last of his second bowl of milk Fortner bethought
himself, and glanced at Aunt Debby.  Her work had fallen from her
nervous hands and lay idly in her lap, while her great eyes were
fixed hungrily upon him.

“They've bin fouten over ter Wildcat to-day,” he said, answering
their inquiry, without waiting to empty his mouth.

“Yes, I heard the cannons,” she said with such gentle voice as made
her dialect seem quaint and sweet.  “I clim up on Bald Rock at the
top o' the mounting an' lissened.  I could see the smoke raisin',
but I couldn't tell nothin'.  Much uv a fout?”

“Awful big'un.  Biggest 'un sence Buner Vister.  Ole Zollicoffer
pitched his whole army onter Kunnel Gerrard's rijimint.  Some other
rijiments cum up ter help Kunnel Garrard, an' both sides fit like
devis fur three or fur hours, an' the dead jess lay in winrows,
an'---”

The demands of Fortner's unappeased appetite here rose superior
to his desire to impart information.  He stopped to munch the last
bit of corn-bread and drain his bowl to the bottom.

“Yes,” said Aunt Debby, inhospitably disregarding the exhaustion
of the provender, and speaking a little more quickly than her wont,
“but which side whipt?”

“Our'n, in course,” said Fortner, with nettled surprise at the
question.  “Our'n, in course.  Old Zollicoffer got ez bad a licken
ez ever Gineral Zach Taylor gi'n the Mexicans.”

“Rayally?” she said.  Gratification showed itself in little lines
that coursed about her mouth, and her eyes illumined as when a
light shines through a window.

“Yes,” answered Fortner.  “Like hounds, and run clean ter the
Ford, whar they're now a-fouten an' strugglin to git acrost, and
drowndin' like so many stampeded cattle.”

“Glory!  Thank God!” said Aunt Debby.  Her earnestness expressed
itself more by the intensity of the tone than its rise.

“Evidently a tolerable regular attendant at Methodist camp-meetings,”
 thought Harry, rousing a little from the torpor into which he was
falling.

Her faded check flushed with a little confusion at having suffered
this outburst, and picking up her knitting she nervously resumed
work.

Fortner looked wistfully at the bottom of his emptied bowl.  Aunt
Debby took it away and speedily returned with it filled.  She came
back with an air of eager expectancy that Fortner would continue
his narrative.  But unsatisfied hunger still dominated him, and
he had thoughts and mouth only for food.  She sad down and resumed
her knitting with an apparent effort at composing herself.

For a full minute the needles clicked industriously.  Then
they stopped; the long, slender fingers clenched themselves about
the ball of yarn; she faced Fortner, her eyes shining with a less
brilliant but intenser light.

“Jim Fortner,” she said with low, measured distinctness, “why don't
ye go on?  Is thar somethin' that ye'r afeered ter tell me?  What
hez hapened ter our folks?  Don't flinch from tellin' me the wust.
I'm allers willin' ter bow ter the will o' the Lord without a
murmur.  On'y let me know what hit is.”

“Why, Aunt Debby, thar hain't been nothin' happened ter 'em,” said
Fortner, deeply surprised.  “Thar ain't nothin' ter tell ye 'bout
'em.  They're all safe.  They're in Kunnel Garrard's rijimint, ez
ye know, an' hit fit behind breastworks, and didn't lose nobody,
scacely--leastwise none uv our kin.”

She rose quickly from her chair.  The ball of yarn fell from her
lap and rolled unheeded toward the glowing coals under the forelog.
With arm outstretched, hands clasped, and eyes directed upward in
fervent appeal, there was much to recall that Deborah from whom she
took her name--that prophetess and priestess who, standing under
the waving palm trees of Ball-Tamar, inspired her countrymen to go
forth and overthrow and destroy their Canaanitish oppressors.

“O, God!” she said in low, thrilling tones, “Thou's aforetimes gi'n
me much ter be thankful fur, as well ez much ter dumbly ba'r when
Thy rod smote me fur reasons thet I couldn't understand.  Thou knows
how gladly I'd've gi'n not on'y my pore, nigh-spent life, but also
those o' my kinsmen, which I prize much higher, fur sech a vict'ry
ez this over the inimies of Thee an' Thy people.  But Thou'st gi'n
hit free ez Thy marcy, without axin' blood sacrifice from any on
us.  I kin on'y praise Thee an' Thy goodness all my days.”

Fortner rose and listend with bowed head while she spoke.  When she
finished he snatched up the ball of shriveling yarn and quenched
its smoking with his hand.  Looking fixedly at this he said softly:
“Aunt Debby, honey, I hain't tole ye all yit.”

“No, Jim?”

“No,” said he, slowly winding up the yarn, “Arter the fouten wuz
thru with at the Gap I slipt down the mounting, an' come in on the
r'ar uv those fellers, an' me an' this ere man drapt two on 'em.”

“I kinder 'spected ye would do something uv thet sort.”

“Then we tuk a short cut an' overtuk 'em agin, an' we drapt another.”

Aunt Debby's eyes expressed surprise at this continued good fortune.

“An' then we tuk 'nuther short cut, an' saved 'nuther one.”

Aunt Debby waited for him to continue.

“At last--jess ez they come ter the Ford--I seed OUR man.”

“Seed Kunnel Bill Pennington?”  The great gray eyes were blazing
now.

“Yes.”  Fortner's speech was the spiritless drawl of the mountains,
and it had now become so languid that it seemed doubtful if after
the enunciation of each word whether vitality enough remained to
evolve a successor.  “Yes,” he repeated with a yawn, as he stuck
the ball of yarn upon the needles and gave the whole a toss which
landed it in the wall-basket, “an' I GOT him, tew.”

“O, just God!  Air ye shore?”

“Jess ez shore ez in the last great day thar'll be some 'un settin'
in judgement atween him an' me.  I wanted him ter be jess ez shore
about me.  I came out in plain sight, and drawed his attention.
He knowed me at fust glimpse, an' pulled his revolver.  I kivered
his heart with the sights an' tetcht the trigger.  I'm sorry now
thet I didn't shoot him thru the belly, so thet he'd been a week
a-dyin' an' every minnit he'd remembered what he wuz killed fur.
But I wuz so afeered that I would not kill him ef I hit him some
place else'n the heart--thet's a wayall pizen varmints hev--thet
I didn't da'r resk hit.  I wuz detarmined ter git him, too, ef I
had ter foller him clean ter Cumberland Gap.”

“Ye done God's vengence,” said Aunt Debby sternly.  “An' yit hit
wuz very soon ter expect hit.”  She clasped her hands upon her
forehead and rocked back and forth, gazing fixedly into the mass
of incandescent coals.

“Hit's gwine to cla'r up ter-morrow,” said Fortner, returning from
an inspection of the sky at the door.  “Le's potter off ter bed,”
 he continued rousing up Harry.  They removed their outer garments
and crawled into one of the comfortable beds in the room.

Later in the night a sharp pain in one of Harry's over-strained
legs awoke him out of his deep slumber, for a few minutes.  Aunt
Debby was still seated before the fire in her chair, rocking back
and forth, and singing softly:


“Thy saints in all this glorious war,
   Shall conquer ere they die.
They see the triumph from afar--
   By faith they bring hit nigh.
Sure I must suffer ef I would reign;
   Increase my courage, Lord.
I'll bear the toil, endure the pain.”


He went to sleep again with the sweet strains ringing in his ears,
as if in some way a part of the marvelous happenings of that most
eventful day.





Chapter XII.  Aunt Debby Brill.




Beneath the dark waves where the dead go down,
    There are gulfs of night more deep;
But little they care, whom the waves once drown,
    How far from the litght they sleep.

And dark though Sorrow's fearful billows be,
    They have caverns darker still.
O God! that Sorrow's waves were like the sea,
    Whose topmost waters kill.
                               -Anonymous.


It was nearly noon when Harry awoke.  The awakening came slowly
and with pain.  In all his previous experiences he had had no hint
even of such mental and bodily exhaustion as now oppressed him.
Every muscle and tendon was aching a bitter complaint against the
strain it had been subjected to the day before.  Dull, pulseless
pain smoldered in some; in others it was the keen throb of the
toothache.  Continued lying in one position was unendurable; changing
it, a thrill of anguish; and the new posture as intolerable as the
first.  His brain galled and twinged as did his body.  To think was
as acute pain as to use his sinews.  Yet he could not help thinking
any more than he could help turning in the bed, though to turn was
torture.

Every organ of thought was bruised and sore.  The fearful events of
the day before would continue to thrust themselves upon his mind.
To put them out required painful effort; to recall and comprehend
them was even worse.  Reflecting upon them now, with unstrung
nerves, made them seem a hundred-fold more terrible than when they
were the spontaneous offspring of hot blood.  With the reflection
came the thoguhts that this was but a prelude--an introduction--to
an infinitely horrible saturnalia of violence and blood, through
which he was to be hurried until released by his own destruction.
This became a nightmare that threatened to stagnate the blood in
his veins.  He gasped, turned his back to the wall with an effort
that thrilled him with pain, and opened his eyes.

Naught that he saw reminded him of the preceding day.  Sunny peace
and contentment reigned.  The door stood wide open, and as it
faced the south, the noonday sun pushed in--clear to the opposite
wall--a broad band of mellow light, vividly telling of the glory
he was shedding where roof nor shade checked his genial glow.  On
the smooth, hard, ashen floor, in the center of this bright zone,
sat a matronly cat, giving with tongue and paw dainty finishing
touches to her morning toilet, and watching with maternal pride
a kittenish game of hide-and-seek on the front step.  Through the
open doorway came the self-complacent cackling of hens, celebrating
their latest additions to their nests, and the exultant call of
a cock to his feathered harem to come, admire and partake of some
especially fat worm, which he had just unearthed.  Farther away
speckled Guinea chickens were clamoring their satisfaction at the
improvement in the weather.  Still farther, gentle tinklings hinted
of peacfully-browsing sheep.

Inside the house, bunches of sweet-smelling medicinal herbs, hanging
agains the walls to dry, made the air heavy with their odors.  Aunt
Debby was at work near the bright zone of sun-rays, spinning yarn
with a “big wheel.”  She held in one hand a long slender roll of
carded wool, and in the other a short stick, with which she turned
the wheel.  Setting it to whirling with a long sweep of the stick
against a spoke, she would walk backward while the roll was twisted
out into a long, thin thread, and then walk forward as they yarn
was wound upon the spindle.  When she walked backward, the spindle
hummed sharply; when she came forward it droned.  There was a stately
rhythm in both, to which her footsteps and graceful sway of body
kept time, and all blended harmoniously with the camp-meeting melody
she was softly singing:


“Jesus, I my cross have taken,
   All to leave and follow Thee;
Naked, poor, despised, forsaken,
   Thou from hence my all shalt be.
Perish every fond ambition--
   All I've sought, or hoped, or known;
Yet how rich is my condition--
   God and Heaven still my own.”


A world of memories of a joyous past, unflecked by a single one of
the miseries of the present, crowded in upon Harry on the wings of
this well-remembered tune.  It was a favorite hymn at the Methodist
church in Sardis, and the last time he had heard it was when he
had accompanied Rachel to the church to attend services conducted
by a noted evangelist.

Ah, Rachel!--what of her?

He had not thought of her since a swift recollection of her words
at the parting scene on the piazza had come to spur up his faltering
resolution, as the regiment advanced up the side of Wildcat.  Now
one bitter thought of how useless all that he had gone through
with the day before was to rehabilitate himself in her good opinion
was speedily chased from his mind by the still bitterer one of the
contempt she must feel for him, did she but know of his present
abject prostration.

After all, might not the occurrences of yesterday be but the memories
of a nightmare?  They seemed too unreal for probability.  Perhaps
he was just recovering consciousness after the delirium of a fever.

The walnut sticks in the fireplace popped as sharply as pistols,
and he trembled from head to foot.

“Heavens, I'm a bigger coward than ever,” he said bitterly, and
turning himself painfully in bed, he fixed his eyes upon the wall.
“I was led to believe,” he continued, “that after I had once been
under fire, I would cease to dread it.  Now, it seems to me more
dreadful than I ever imagined it to be.”

Aunt Debby's wheel hummed and droned still louder, but her pleasant
tones rode on the cadences like an Aeolian harp in a rising wind:


“Man may trouble and distress me,
   'T will but drive me to Thy breast;
Life with trials hard may press me;
   Heaven will bring me sweeter rest.
O, 'tis not in grief to harm me,
   While Thy love is left to me.
O, 'twere not in joy to charm me,
   Were that joy unmixed with Thee.”


He wondered weakly why ther were no monasteries in this land and
age, to serve as harbors or refuge for those who shrank from the
fearfulness of war.

He turned over again wearily, and Aunt Debby, looking toward him,
encountered his wide-open eyes.

“Yer awake, air ye?” she said kindly.  “Hope I didn't disturb you.
I wuz tryin' ter make ez little noise ez possible.”

“No, you didn't rouse me.  It's hard for me to sleep in daylight,
even when fatigued, as I am.”

“Ef ye want ter git up now,” she said, stopping the whell by pressing
the stick against a spoke, and laying the “roll” in her hand upon
the wheel-head, “I'll hev some breakfast fur ye in a jiffy.  Ye
kin rise an' dress while I run down ter the spring arter a fresh
bucket o' water.”

She covered her head with a “slat sun-bonnet,” which she took from
a peg in the wall, lifted a cedar waterpail from a shelf supported
by other long pegs, poured its contents into a large cast-iron
teakettle swinging over the fire, and whisked out of the door.
Presently the notes of her hymn mingled in plaintive harmony with
the sparkling but no sweeter song of a robin redbreast, twittering
his delight in the warm sunshine amid the crimson apples of the
tree that overhung the spring.

“Will ye hev a fresh drink?” she asked Harry, on her return.

He took the gourdful of clear, cool water, which she offered him,
and drank heartily.

“Thet hez the name o' bein' the best spring in these parts,” she
said, pleased with his appreciation.

“An' hit's a never-failin' spring, too.  We've plenty o' water the
dryest times, when everybody else's goes dry.”

“That IS delicious water,” said Harry.

“An' now I'll git ye yor breakfast in a minnit.  The teakittle's
a-bilin', the coffee's ground, the pone's done, an' when I fry a
little ham, everything will be ready.”

As her culinary methods and utensils differed wholly from anything
Harry had ever seen, he studied them with great interest sharpened
not a little by a growing appetite for breakfast.

The clumsy iron teakettle swung on a hook at the end of a chain
fastened somewhere in the throat of the chimney.  On the rough stones
forming 

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