An Unofficial Patriot

"At first happy news came, in gay letters moiled
With my kisses, – of camp life and glory."

    Browning.

The fall and winter wore on. Spring was near. Griffith wrote to Katherine daily and mailed his letters whenever and wherever it was possible. His personal reports of progress went with regularity to Mr. Lincoln, and an occasional note of congratulation or thanks or encouragement came to him in reply. Meantime the Army of the Potomac did little but wait, and the armies of the South and West were active. Letters from the boys came to Katherine with irregular regularity. Those from Howard were always brief and full of an irresponsible gurgle of fun and heroics. He had been in two or three small fights, and wrote of them as if he had enjoyed an outing on a pleasure excursion. He said in one that when he was on picket duty he had "swapped lies and grub" with the picket on the other side. "He tried to stuff me with a lot of fiction about the strength of their force – said they had not less than ninety thousand men in front of us ready to lick us in the morning. I told him that I'd just happened by accident to hear our roll called, and it took two days and a night to read the names of our officers alone. He was a crack liar but I reckon we got off about even. He had the worst old gun I ever saw. It came out of the ark. He admired mine, and it was a tip-top Enfield, but I told him it was just an old borrowed thing (the last of which was true) and that my own was nearly as big as fifty of it and would shoot ten miles. He kicked at me and laughed, but I didn't tell him I was a gunner in a battery. A battery is a jim-dandy of a place. I get to ride all the time. That suits me right down to the ground. I haven't had a scratch yet and I'm not afraid I'll get one." His letters rattled on in some such fashion whenever he remembered or exerted himself enough to write at all. They developed in slang as the months went by, and Katherine smiled and sighed.

Beverly's letters kept up their old tone, and he tried in every way he could think of, to cheer his mother. He had wholly recovered, he said, from his wounds, and was now with Grant in Tennessee. He described the long moss on the trees, and wrote: "We are moving now toward Corinth. That is the objective point. I was transferred a month ago to Grant's army, and so, unless Roy has been transferred since you wrote me last, I'll get to see him in a few days, I hope. That will be good. It seems as if we boys had traveled a pretty long road in the matter of age and experience since we were at home together. I'm glad to hear of Roy's promotion – the handsome fellow! And so it was for conspicuous bravery at Fort Donaldson, was it? Good! Good! Ah, we can be proud of Roy, mother. And he got only a little flesh-wound in it all, and did not have to go to the hospital at all! What lucky dogs we boys are, to be sure. I hope father is home with you by this time. Of course, I understand the ominous silence and inaction in Virginia – in the army of the Potomac – as only a few of us can. But I do hope that father will do all the President asked of him, and get home before they undertake to act upon the information he is enabling them to gather. Yes, yes, mother, I know how terribly hard he took it, and how silently heroic he is and will be, God bless him! But after all, mother mine, your part is about the hardest of all to bear. I think of that more and more! To sit and wait! To silently sit and wait for you know not what. To take no active part! Oh, the heroic patience and endurance that must take! But don't worry about us. The fact is that we are not in half so much danger as you think. When one comes to know how few, after all, of the millions of rounds of ammunition that are fired, ever find their mark in human flesh, one can face them pretty courageously. We were talking it over in camp the other day – a lot of the officers. I really had had no idea what a safe place a battle-field is. It seems that out of 7260 balls fired, only ten hit anybody, and only one of those are serious or fatal! Just look at the chances a fellow has. Why he doesn't seem to be in much more danger than he is that a brick will fall on him as he walks the streets, or that he'll slip and break his neck on the ice. Doesn't seem so very dangerous, now, does it, mother? Now, I want you to remember those figures, for they are correct. Then you remember that I got my three – which is more than my share of balls, in the very first fight I was in; so you see I'm not likely to get any more. Roy had one, so his chance to catch any more is poor; and as for Howard – well, somehow or other, I never feel the least anxiety about Howard. He'd pull through a knot-hole if the knot was still in it. He is so irresistibly, irresponsibly, recklessly indifferent. But at all events, mother, don't worry too much. My only anxiety, now, is to hear that father is at home again; both for your sake and for his. Ye gods! what a terrific sacrifice the President demanded of him! And what a stubborn heroism it has taken to make father do it, – with his temperament and feelings, – a heroism and patriotism beyond even the comprehension of most men. Give little Margaret the enclosed note, please. I don't know that she can read it, but I wrote it as plain as I could on this shingle. We are moving pretty steadily now. We stopped to-day, to let the supplies catch up. We start again in an hour or so. We are all ready now.

"I never cease to be glad that you have old aunt Judy, and that she continues such a comfort, – and trial. Give her my love, and tell the gentle and buxom Rosanna, that if she were in this part of the country she'd 'see the loikes av me' at every turn. Soldiers are thicker than peas in a pod, and she'd not have 'to go fur t' foind the loikes av me' multiplied by ten thousand, all of whom 'become their soger close' quite as truly as did the undersigned when the admiration of Rosanna for me blossomed forth in such eloquence and elaboration of diction. This seems rather a frivolous letter; but I want you to keep up good heart, little mother. It won't – it can't – last much longer, and just as soon as father gets home, I, for one, shall feel quite easy again. I hope he is there by this time, with his part all done. The last letter I got from him, he thought it would not take much longer to do all they expected him to do, now. Dear old father! His last letter to me was an inspiration and a sermon, in living (as he is), without the least bit of preaching in it. He doesn't need to preach. He lives far better than any creed or than any religion; but – "

Katherine broke off and pondered. Was Beverly still reading Thomas Paine? If he were to be killed! What did he believe? "Lives far better than any creed or than any religion," what did he mean? Had Beverly become openly an unbeliever in creeds and religions? The thought almost froze her blood. She fell upon her knees and wept and prayed – not for her son's life to be spared from the bullets of the enemy, as was her habit, but that the "shafts of the destroyer" might spare his soul! Her cup of anxiety and sorrow was embittered and made to overflow by the sincerity of a belief which was so simple, and knew so little of evasion, that the bottomless pit did, indeed, yawn before her for this son of her youth.

"Save him! save him!" she moaned aloud, "if not from death, at least from destruction, oh, God of my salvation!"

The terrors which should follow unbelief had been long ago, in her rigid Presbyterian home, made so much a part of her very nature, that the simple, cheerful, happy side of Griffith's religion, which had been uppermost all these years, had not even yet, in cases of unusual stress, obliterated the horror of Katherine's literal belief in and fear of an awful hell, and a vengeance-visiting God for those who slighted or questioned the justice or truth of a cruel revelation of Him. A great and haunting fear for Beverly's soul eclipsed her fear for his life, and Katherine's religion added terrors to the war that were more real and dark and fearful than the real horrors that are a natural and legitimate part of a cruel, civil contest. The "comforts," to a loving heart and a clear head, of such a religion, were vague and shadowy; indeed. Its certain and awful threats were like a flaming sword of wrath ever before her eyes. To those who could evade the personal application of the tenets of their faith, who could accept or reject at will the doctrines they professed, who could wear as an easy garment the parts they liked, and slip from their shoulders the features of their "revelation" to which the condition of their own loved ones did not respond, there might be comfort. But to Katherine there was none. Her faith was so real and firm, that it did not doubt a literal damnation, nor could she read from under the decree those she loved, simply because she loved them. An eternal decree of suffering hung over her first-born, the idol of her soul! The awful burden of her religion was almost more than she could bear in these days of fear and loneliness, stimulated as it was by the ever-present threat and shadow of death for the lamb that had strayed, even so little, from the orthodox fold. Her days were doubly burdened by the new anxiety, shadowed by the real, and haunted by the agony of fear for the imaginary, danger to her son. In her dreams, that night, she saw him stand before an angry and avenging God, and she awoke in a very panic of delirium and mental anguish. Great beads of moisture stood upon her brow. "Save him! save him! oh, God of our salvation!" she cried out, and little Margaret stirred uneasily in her bed.

"Wat dat, honey? Wat dat yoh say, Mis' Kate!" called out Judy from her cot in the next room. "Did yoh call me, Mis' Kate?"

"No, no, aunt Judy, I had a bad dream. I – "

The old woman hobbled in. "Now, des look aheah, honey, des yoh stop that kine er dreams, now. Dey ain't no uste t' nobody, an' dey des makes bad wuk all de way 'roun'. An' 'sides dat dey ain't got no sense to'em, nohow." Poor old aunt Judy, her philosophy was deeper and truer than she knew or than her mistress suspected; but the sound of her kind old voice comforted Katherine as no philosophy could.

"Dar now, honey, yoh des lay right down dar'n' go to sleep agin. Yoah ole aunt Judy des gwine ter stay right heah twell yoah skeer gits gone. Dar now, dar now, honey, dem kine er dreams is all foolishness. Dey is dat! Now, I gwine ter set heah an' yoh des whorl in an' dream sompin' good 'bout Mos Grif, dat's what you do! Aunt Judy gwine ter set right heah by de bed. Dar now, honey! Dar now, go sleep."

CHAPTER XVIII

"Into the jaws of death,
Into the mouth of hell."

    Tennyson.

It had rained in torrents. The stiff day of the muddy roads was ankle deep. Roy's regiment in camp near the Tennessee river was whiling away its time as best it could. It was generally understood that they were to be Joined in a day or two by reinforcements, and then march on to Corinth. Roy knew that Beverly was to be with the expected command. The young lieutenant – a first lieutenant now – was proud and eager. He thought it would be a fine thing for him and Beverly to fight side by side. He meant to show Beverly that he was no longer a boy. A soft silken mustache had come to accent his fresh complexion, and he was as handsome and tall and graceful and erect as a young soldier need be. He carried himself with peculiar grace, and he was an inch taller than Beverly, now. He hoped that he would be taller than his brother, and he walked very erect, indeed, as he thought about it. Then he smiled to himself and said half aloud, "He will be here to-morrow, and I shall give him a great welcome – and a surprise." This was his last thought as he turned on his side, and fell into a soldier's dreamless sleep, in spite of rain and mud, in spite of noise and confusion, in spite of danger and anxiety.

It was the night of the fifth of April. Roy had planned to appear very splendid to his brother on the morrow. He had shaved freshly and brushed his uniform, and rubbed up his new shoulder straps. His sword was burnished, and the boy had smiled to himself many times as he worked over these details, to think how vain he was, and how anxious that Beverly should look pleased and proud when he should see him at his best. He seemed to have slept only a little while when there straggled into his consciousness the sound of a shot, then another and another; then a sudden indescribable noise and confusion roused him wholly. He sprang to his feet.

The gray of the dawning day was here. Bugles were sounding. Confusion, noise, action was on all sides. The camp had been surprised! The enemy was upon them! Grape, canister and Enfield balls tore through the tents. Shells burst; the first vision that met his eyes as he rushed forth, was a horse of one of their own batteries, struggling, moaning, whinnying pitifully with both fore-legs torn away, and the cannon half overturned. An onrushing force of Confederates shouting in triumph. As his own regiment tried to form in line, three terrified horses tore past dragging their fellow, and what was left of the dismantled cannon. They were wounding each other cruelly in their mad frenzy of pain and fright. They fell in one mass of struggling, suffering, panic-stricken flesh into the river and drowned, with their harness binding them together, and to the wreck of their dismantled burden. Everything was confusion. Each regiment was doing its best to form and repulse the terrible onslaught. The surprise had been complete. The scouts had been surrounded and captured, and the pickets killed or driven in at the first charge which had awakened the sleeping camp. The horrors, the disasters and the triumphs of Shiloh had begun!

There was no time to think. Action, alone, was possible – the intuitive action of the soldier. The men formed as best they could, and fought as they fell back, or as they advanced a step, with dogged determination to retrieve lost ground. Some were driven into the river, and when wounded, fell beneath its waves to rise no more. The intrepid Confederates followed up their first dash with persistent determination, in spite of the forced march which had preceded the surprise, and in spite of hunger and uncertainty when their supplies might come. They aimed at nothing short of capture. Then supplies would be theirs without delay. But every foot of ground was being stubbornly contested. Now a gain was made, now a loss. Both sides were fighting with that desperation which makes certain only one thing as the issue of the battle – the certainty of an awful carnage. At Such a time it does not seem possible, and yet it is true, that a sense of reckless humor finds place and material to feed its fancy. A good-natured badinage held possession of many of the men.

Roy's regiment had been driven back by the first sudden onrush. It had formed and fought as it went, but it had undoubtedly been forced from its position of advantage on the rise of the hill. They were struggling desperately to regain it. Every man seemed determined to stand again where he had stood an hour before or die in the attempt. A large piece of paper pinned to a tree with a bayonet, attracted Roy's attention as the smoke was lifted for a moment, while they pushed forward inch by inch. The boys had seen its like before. They understood and it acted like a stimulant upon them. Some of the boys laughed outright. The smoke hid the paper. The next volley had driven the Confederates a step farther back. The ground was strewn with their men, lying side by side with those who had fallen from the Northern ranks at the first dash of the enemy. The tree with the paper was a trifle nearer.

"Charge for that challenge, boys! Charge!" shouted Roy, and they responded with a yell and a murderous volley as they ran. It was almost within reach now, but the men who had posted it fought like tigers to hold their ground.

"We'll get it, boys! We'll get it!" rang out with the roar of the battle. At last the tree was only a few feet away. A private dashed out of the line, and grasped the bayonet that held the coveted paper and swung it aloft. The challenge was captured! Even the boys who lay on the ground joined in the triumphal shout and one of them volunteered to reply. He had a good arm left! He took a pencil from his breast pocket, and turned his body painfully, slowly, so that he could write. The stock of his gun was desk enough. He read the captured paper and laughed. "The – La. presents its compliments to the – Ind., and intends to thrash it out of its boots – as usual."

The wounded man turned the paper over and wrote: "The – Ind. returns its compliments to the – La. and expresses a desire to see it accomplish the job." He was so near to the tree that he thought he could drag himself to it and post up the reply on the far side, but his legs were numb and helpless, and the pain of dragging himself on hands and hips conquered him. He looked all about him. The ambulance workers had come, not far away, to carry off the wounded. One came near and offered to help him.

"Pin that paper to the far side of that tree, first," he said, with a grim smile. "I'll wait."

The man refused, but the wounded fellow essaying to drag himself toward it again, he yielded, and the return challenge was posted.

Two hours later its work, was done. The —

La. held the hill again! A laughing shout went up. It might have been a warmly contested game of football, so free from malice was it.

All over the great battle-field the work of the day was back and forth over the same bloody and trampled ground. The mud of the morning took on another tinge of red, and the mingled blood of the gallant fellows who gave their lives for the side they had espoused made hideous mortar of the ghastly sacrifice. The river ran on its way to the sea, floating the costliest driftwood ever cast by man as an offering to his own passions, mistakes, and ambitions; a driftwood pale and ghastly, clad in gray or in blue, and scattering from Maine to Texas, from ocean to ocean, the sorrow that travels in the wake of war, the anguish of those who silently wait by the fireside, for the step that will never come, for the voice that is silent forever! Ah, the ghastliness of war! Ah, the costliness of war! It is those who do not fight who pay the heaviest debt and find its glory ashes!

On the hill was the rivalry of the challenge. It gave grim humor to the contest. Three challenges were taken, and three replaced, before the sunset brought that suspension of effort which left the hill, the tree, and the final glory of the day in the hands of the Confederates. The drawn battle was over for the night, but the trend of the victory was southward, and the heavens once more deluged the dead and dying with the pitiless downpour of chilling rain all the night long. In the northern camp the tired men slept in spite of rain and mud and distant cannonading. With the slain beside them, the groans of the dying about them, the echo of the conflict in their ears, the promise of the struggle of the morrow, still the tired men slept! In the Confederate camp sleep was impossible. The Federal relief boats had come! To-morrow fresh men would fill the Northern ranks. Meantime the thunder of the great gunboats continued the unequal contest. Shot and shell fell with the rain into the Confederate camp. All night the bombardment went on. The river was tinged with red, the heavens kept up the old refrain and wept for the sins, the mistakes, the cruelties of men, and still the tired soldiers slept and waited for the morrow – and what? There would be no more surprises at least. Both understood now that it was a stubborn fight. Both knew that the reinforcements were here for the Federal troops. Pickets and scouts were wide awake now; no danger of another surprise. All night the relief corps worked. All night the distant echoes from the gunboats brought hope to the one and desperation to the other army. All night the surgeons labored. All night stragglers came in dragging wounded limbs. All night suffering horses neighed and whinnied and struggled and at last died from loss of blood – and still men slept! Ah, the blessed oblivion and relief of sleep! If to-morrow's action must come, then to-night nature must restore the wasted energy, and repair the deathly exhaustion, – and men slept! Soaked through with rain, begrimed with smoke and with mud, assailed with groans and with that insidious foe of rest, uncertainty, still men slept, soundly, profoundly, dreamlessly!

The first gray streak of dawn brought a bugle call: another, another. The clouds were clearing away. Nature was preparing to witness another and more desperate struggle. The dreamless sleep, that had refused to yield to hunger, pain, uproar or anxiety, yielded at the first note of the réveille. Every man was awake, alert, active. The rain and action-stiffened limbs were ready for duty again. The seventh of April had dawned. Reinforcements would soon land; but the battle was on before they could disembark. The Confederates, flushed with the advantage of the day before, were determined to overwhelm even the new force. The battle was on. Roy, the spruce, trim, and some young lieutenant of the day before, waiting for his brother with proud, brotherly anxiety, was a sorry sight to-day, but that did not trouble him. His new shoulder-straps were tarnished, his sword was marked with an ugly red stain, his freshly brushed uniform was bespattered and wrinkled and wet, mud-covered and torn; but he was unhurt save for the track of a Minie ball under the skin of his left arm. To that he gave no heed. A plaster of the pottery clay, self-applied, had taken the soreness almost away, and as Roy stood at the head of his company to-day and took the place of the captain, who would respond to roll-call no more, he was wondering if Beverly would be with the troops that would land, and if they would help save the day. He hoped that Beverly would be there, and yet – after the sights and experiences of yesterday —did he hope that Beverly would be there? Beverly might be killed! He had not thought of that the day before, nor had it troubled him for himself; but as he looked about him now or bent to see if an old comrade were really dead, or only unconscious, he somehow felt glad that Beverly had not been there the day before. Ah, these hearts of ours! – these hearts of ours! What tricks they play us! What cowards they make of us! What selfishness they breed in us! For ourselves we can be brave, defiant, even jocose, in the midst of danger or of sorrow; but for those we love! Ah, for those we love, our philosophy is scant comfort, our courage is undermined before it is tested, and we are helpless in the face of Love. We can walk bravely enough into the mouth of a cannon, but Love disarms us, and we cry for mercy where we did not shrink from death!

Roy wondered how much Beverly knew of the battle, and if his heart was anxious, also. He knew Beverly's division was expected, but he thought as he fought, "I reckon I'd just as lieve Beverly shouldn't be with them. If he were on sick leave or – or – something." He felt a little sense of shame for the thought, and fought the more determinedly because of it. The gallant Confederates were flushed by their gain of the day before. No one would have dreamed that they were exhausted by a long march before the surprise. No one would have dreamed that they were hungry, and that their supply-wagons had not come up until long after the struggle. No one would have dreamed that they had been kept up all night by the bombardment from the distant gunboats. No one would have dreamed that out of that intrepid – Louisiana, with its challenge again on the tree there, would never muster again over three hundred and twenty-seven of the six hundred merry fellows who flung themselves up that hill only twelve short hours ago!

"Our side bet is up, boys, by the jumping jingo!" said one of the relieved pickets the first thing in the morning. "It is written on a slab this time. I don't know when they got it up. I laid for it all night, and was going to pick the fellow off who came out to that tree, but it was darker than a pile of coke last night, and, if hell ever saw such a rain before, the fires must all be out – soaked through. Don't believe there is a dry spot in the devil's domain to-day. Whew! Look at my boots! I had to stop and scrape the mud off every four steps all night long. My feet were as big as a horse's head – and it's mighty good Bible mud, too – sticketh closer than a brother."

The boys had laughed and agreed that they would get the new challenge somehow. The news that it was up again, and on a substantial slab, which seemed to aggravate the offense in some inexplicable way, spread and aroused the young fellows anew. They would have that slab or die in the attempt. The side bet, as they called it, must be won. They were making straight for it, and the Confederates were holding their position with grim and dogged determination. A sudden onrush of fresh, eager, rested, enthusiastic men, yelling as they came from the gunboats, dashed from the steamboat landing and flung themselves against the lines. The relief had come! Regiment after regiment dashed past. Every new one was felt like a blast of cold wind in the face of a belated traveler. The Confederate lines wavered, broke, rallied, retreated, reformed. More fresh troops came and swept past like fire in a field of grain. Discouraged men felt the bracing influence and stimulant on the one side. On the other, it seemed that at last the billows of the ocean had broken upon them, and they must yield or be forever overwhelmed. As each new regiment came up, with its shout and wild, eager dash in the face of the enemy, the ground was being gathered in like thread on a great spool as it revolves. Inch by inch the line yielded. The river was left behind, with its horrible secret, to keep its bloody tryst with the sea; to carry its drift of gallant men, who would, alas, be gallant no more, on the infinite wanderings of its waves, as they ran and struggled in vain to leave behind the memory and the burden of the pitiless struggle and carnage – the relics of man's power and courage and savagery, to do and to die by and for his fellow-man, that he may adjust differences he himself has raised from the infinite depths of his own ignorance – from the blindness of his benighted past! And still the river ran on in its hopeless effort, for the human drift kept pace, and the awful battle was lost and won. Shiloh had passed into history, and Grant was famous! The country took stock of its loss and its gain. One more milestone in the devious road was past. One more reef was taken in the irrepressible conflict. The North rejoiced. The South sorrowed, and mothers, wives, sisters, and sweethearts stared at the wall and wept and moaned for the treasure that was lost, for the price that was paid, and took up anew their stunned and silent part, and waited and hoped and prayed.

One of the first regiments to dash past into the hell of shot and shell was Beverly's. He had noticed, as people will notice trivial things in the midst of great crises, a board nailed to a tree. When the battle was over he had searched for his brother's regiment. At last he had found it, but Roy was not there. Some one said he had fallen, others said he had been captured just before the relief came – "Right up there by the challenge – by the tree." Beverly rode back toward the hill, sick and faint at heart. He wondered, with a thrill of superstitious fear, if that board was to be a sort of grave-mark for his brother, and if that was the reason he had noticed the ridiculous challenge at such a time. He would go back to the mark and search for his brother. He got down from his horse and tied him to the tree. The challenge was still there. He had no heart to read it, but started on his sickening search. Face after face that he knew – boys from the old college – looked up at him – some, alas, with stark, unseeing eyes, and others who begged for help. Boys he had in the old days cared for with youthful fervor, and yet they seemed as nothing to him now; he must not lose time – he must find his brother. Again and again he turned a bloody face upward only to exclaim, "Thank God!" when he did not know the features. Oh, the infinite selfishness of Love! The toy it makes of our human sympathies! The contraction it pats upon our generosity of soul! The limitations it sets upon our helpfulness! When twilight came Beverly was still searching for his brother, and thanking God, in the face of every mangled form, that it was the face of some other man's brother – some other mother's son! He returned to the camp for a light. He could not wait until morning to be sure that Roy was captured. He hoped and prayed that it might be so, but he must know. No report had come to the regiment. Roy had not been found or recognized. Beverly went hastily through the hospital tents. Roy had not been brought in. The search on the field began again – the search for his brother. The relief corps were working heroically. Men with stretchers passed and repassed him, and still Beverly looked in vain. He turned his dark lantern on the stretchers as they approached him, and sighed with relief as each passed on. He came to the spot where the little church had stood, now dismantled and wrecked by shell.

One after another he turned the faces of prostrate men upward. The night was wearing on. He was desperate, discouraged, and yet he had begun to settle into a solid hope that Roy had been captured and taken back into the Confederate ranks before the relief had come. He was making his way back to the tree and his impatient horse, when he heard a gurgling groan in a muddy ravine through which the retreating cannon had gone. He turned aside and searched with his lantern again. Deep in the stiff mud lay a young officer. His legs were deeply imbedded. Evidently the wheel of a cannon-carriage, or some other heavy wheel, had passed over him and crushed his legs into the soft earth. He had lain directly in the path of the retreating ordnance. The deep tracks told where the wheels had been. Beverly turned sick. He stooped to lift the face that lay half in the mud and water.

"Oh, Roy! Roy! my brother!" he gasped and fell upon his knees. His hand trembled so that the canteen fell from his grasp. He groped for it as the lantern lay beside him, and one hand till held the face above the earth. "Roy! Roy! can you hear me? Can you hear me? It is your brother! It is Beverly!" he cried out, but for reply there was only that gurgling groan, followed by another and another – and then silence.

"Oh, my God!" cried Beverly, "What can I do? It will kill him to try to lift those poor crushed legs and – "

The light fell on the breast, and there, for the first time, Beverly saw that it was not mud alone that lay there, but that a piece of spent shell was half crushed into Roy's side. It was plain now. Roy had fallen with that, and the retreating battery had driven over his helpless form. Beverly wiped the mud and powder from his brother's face and bent down and kissed the parted lips.

"Oh, my brother! my brother! I came too late at last! I thought all the way on the river, and then, as we dashed up that hill, I thought we had come in time to save you, and I was so glad! Roy, I prayed not to be too late! Somehow I thought you were up there. And you were here – here, with this ghastly wound – and they drove over you! O, Roy, Roy, my brother how can I ever tell mother? How can I?"

The long, gurgling moan came again. Beverly sprang to his feet and shouted for help. Shout after shout rang out. At last a reply came, and then men with a stretcher.

"I have found my brother," was all Beverly could say. His own voice seemed strange and distant to him. The men get about lifting the body from its bed of clay – the body of this spruce young officer who had been so eager that his brother should feel proud to see him in his new uniform with the first-lieutenant's straps! No one could tell what the uniform was now, and the jaunty cap and polished sword were gone! The strong young legs and the erect figure could boast of its extra inch no longer. Beverly breathed hard as the men worked. "I'm afraid he's too far gone to help now, captain. It – "

"Oh, let me lift his head! I can't pull on those poor crushed legs! Be so careful! Oh, God! oh, God! how cruel! Be so careful! – oh, Roy! Roy! – We are trying to be so careful, Roy! We try not to hurt you so! My God, how cruel! I cannot bear it, brother!"

The body was on the stretcher at last, and Beverly was wiping great beads of anguish from his own face. One poor leg was crushed near the hip, and had been hard to manage. The groans had become more distinct and frequent. Then,"Dr – dr," came from the lips.

"Here, here, give me a canteen! I lost mine down there. Quick, he wants a drink, I think. Here, brother Roy." Beverly put a hand under his head. "Here, Roy, dear, can you swallow? Oh, it hurts him so! Here, brother, my brother! Oh, Roy, I wish it were I! Can you hear me? Can you hear me, Roy?"

The men with the stretcher turned their faces away and drew their sleeves across their eyes. Even they who had worked all night with and for the dead and dying were moved anew by the young officer's sorrow. Beverly looked up hopefully.

"I think he swallowed just a little. Let us get him to a surgeon, quick. Perhaps, perhaps – " Beverly looked from one to the other and could not finish his sentence. The little group moved wearily toward the hospital tents, and Beverly ran for the surgeon of his own company.

"My God, doctor, he has been driven over, and he is wounded in the breast besides! Do you think there is any hope? Oh, how I wish it were I! Oh, doctor, can't you save him? It is my brother – my brother Roy!"

The surgeon was listening as he worked.

"The best thing that could have happened to him is that he was so deep in that mud. It has kept the fever down. It has saved his leg. It isn't badly swollen. I can set this bone. I don't think the other one is – " He was examining and talking slowly. He changed to the wound in the breast. "This is the most – this is the worst, but I don't think the lung is badly – this plaster of mud on his breast – "