Chapter II: Part 2

Slowly, after an hour and a half, the roar of battle abated, and the young officer and his general made their way back along the line. By three o'clock the great duel was over; the two hundred and fifty guns, having been fired rapidly for two hours, seemed to have become mortal, and to suffer a mortal's exhaustion. Along the crest, battery-men leaned upon their guns, gasped, and wiped the grime and sweat from their faces.

Again there was deep, ominous silence. Of the harm done on the opposite ridge they could know nothing with certainty. They looked about, then back at each other questioningly. Here disabled guns were being taken away, fresh guns were being brought up. The Union lines had suffered harm, but not irreparable harm. That centre for which the young officer had trembled was still safe. Was the struggle over? Would the enemy withdraw? Had yesterday's defeat worn him out; was this great confusion intended to cover his retreat? Was it—

Suddenly, madly, the young officer and his general flung themselves back into their saddles, wildly they galloped to the summit of that wave-like crest.

What they saw there was incredible, yet real; it was impossible, yet it was visible. How far had the enemy gone in the retreat which they suspected? The enemy was at hand. What of their speculations about his withdrawal, of their cool consideration of his intention? In five minutes he would be upon them. From the heavy smoke he issued, regiment after regiment, brigade after brigade, his front half a mile broad, his ranks shoulder to shoulder, line supporting line. His eyes were fixed upon that rounded clump of trees, his course was directed toward the centre of that wave-like crest. He was eighteen thousand against six thousand; should his gray mass enter, wedge-like, the Union line, yesterday's Union victories, day before yesterday's Union losses would be in vain.

To the young officer, enemies though they were, they seemed admirable. They had but one soul; they would have been, under a less deadly fire, opposed by less fearful odds, an irresistible mass. Before them he saw their galloping officers, their scarlet flags; he discerned their gun-barrels and bayonets gleaming in the sun.

His own army was composed also; it required no orders, needed no command; it knew well what that gray wall portended. He heard the click of gun-locks, the clang of muskets, raised to position upon the stone wall, the clink of iron axles, the words of his general, quiet, calm, cool.

"Do not hurry! Let them come close! Aim low and steadily!"

There came to him a moment of fierce rapture. He saw the color-sergeant tipping his lance toward the enemy; he remembered that from that glorious flag, lifted by the western breeze, these advancing hosts would filch half its stars. With bursting heart, blessing God who had kept him loyal, he determined that this thing should not be.

He was sent to Meade to announce the coming of the foe; he returned, galloping along the crest. Into that advancing army the Union cannon poured shells; then, as the range grew shorter, shrapnel; then, canister; and still the hardy lines moved on. There was no charging shout, there was still no confusion, no halt under that raking fire. Stepping over the bodies of their friends, they continued to advance, they raised their muskets, they fired. There was now a new sound, "like summer hail upon the city roofs."

The young officer searched for his general, and could not find him. He had been mounted; now, probably wounded, possibly killed, he was down from his horse.

Then, suddenly, once more, the impossible, the incredible became possible, real. The young officer had not dreamed that the Confederates would be able to advance to the Union lines; his speculation concerned only the time they would be able to stand the Union fire. But they have advanced, they are advancing still farther. And there in that weak centre—he cannot trust his own vision—men are leaving the sheltering wall; without order or reason, a "fear-stricken flock of confusion," they are falling back. The fate of Gettysburg, it seemed to his horrified eyes, hung by a spider's single thread.

"A great, magnificent passion"—thus in his youthful emotion he describes it—came upon the young man. Danger had seemed to him throughout a word without meaning. Now, drawing his sword, laying about with it, waving it in the air, shouting, he rushed upon this fear-stricken flock, commanded it, reproached it, cheered it, urged it back. Already the red flags had begun to thicken and to flaunt over the deserted spot; they were to him, he wrote afterwards, like red to a maddened bull. That portion of the wall was lost; he groaned for the presence of Gibbon, of Hays, of Hancock, of Doubleday, but they were engaged, or they were too far away. He rushed hither and yon, still beseeching, commanding, praying that troops be sent to that imperiled spot.

Then, in joy which was almost insanity, he saw that gray line begin to waver and to break. Tauntingly he shouted, fiercely his men roared; than their mad yells no Confederate "Hi-yi" was ever more ferocious. This repelling host was a new army, sprung Phœnix-like from the body of the old; to him its eyes seemed to stream lightning, it seemed to shake its wings over the yet glowing ashes of its progenitor. He watched the jostling, swaying lines, he saw them boil and roar, saw them dash their flamy spray above the crest like two hostile billows of a fiery ocean.

Once more commands are few, men do not heed them. Clearly once more they see their duty, magnificently they obey. This is war at the height of its passion, war at the summit of its glory. A color-sergeant rushed to the stone wall, there he fell; eagerly at once his comrades plunged forward. There was an instant of fierce conflict, of maddening, indistinguishable confusion. Men wrestled with one another, opposed one another with muskets used as clubs, tore at each other like wolves, until spent, exhausted, among heaps of dead, the conquered began to give themselves up. Back and forth over twenty-five square miles they had fought, for three interminable days. Here on this little crest, by this little wall, the fight was ended. Here the high-water mark was reached, here the flood began its ebb. Laughing, shouting, "so that the deaf could have seen it in their faces, the blind have heard it in their voices," the conquerors proclaimed the victory. Thank God, the crest is safe!

Are men wounded and broken by the thousands, do they lie in burning thirst, pleading for water, pleading for the bandaging of bleeding arteries, pleading for merciful death? The conquerors think of none of these things. Is night coming, are long marches coming? Still the conquerors shout like mad. Is war ended by this mammoth victory? For months and months it will drag on. Is this conquered foe a stranger, will he now withdraw to a distant country? He is our brother, his ills are ours, these wounds which we have given, we shall feel ourselves for fifty years. Is this brave young officer to enjoy the reward of his great courage, to live in fame, to be honored by his countrymen? At Cold Harbor he is to perish with a bullet in his forehead. Is not all this business of war mad?

It is a feeble, peace-loving, fireside-living generation which asks such questions as these.

Now, thank God, _the crest is safe_!

IV

THE BATTLE-GROUND

Mercifully, Mary Bowman, a widow, whose husband had been missing since the battle of Gettysburg, had been warned, together with the other citizens of Gettysburg, that on Thursday the nineteenth of November, 1863, she would be awakened from sleep by a bugler's reveillé, and that during that great day she would hear again dread sound of cannon.

Nevertheless, hearing again the reveillé, she sat up in bed with a scream and put her hands over her ears. Then, gasping, groping about in her confusion and terror, she rose and began to dress. She put on a dress which had been once a bright plaid, but which now, having lost both its color and the stiff, out-standing quality of the skirts of '63, hung about her in straight and dingy folds. It was clean, but it had upon it certain ineradicable brown stains on which soap and water seemed to have had no effect. She was thin and pale, and her eyes had a set look, as though they saw other sights than those directly about her.

In the bed from which she had risen lay her little daughter; in a trundle-bed near by, her two sons, one about ten years old, the other about four. They slept heavily, lying deep in their beds, as though they would never move. Their mother looked at them with her strange, absent gaze; then she barred a little more closely the broken shutters, and went down the stairs. The shutters were broken in a curious fashion. Here and there they were pierced by round holes, and one hung from a single hinge. The window-frames were without glass, the floor was without carpet, the beds without pillows.

In her kitchen Mary Bowman looked about her as though still seeing other sights. Here, too, the floor was carpetless. Above the stove a patch of fresh plaster on the wall showed where a great rent had been filled in; in the doors were the same little round holes as in the shutters of the room above. But there was food and fuel, which was more than one might have expected from the aspect of the house and its mistress. She opened the shattered door of the cupboard, and, having made the fire, began to prepare breakfast.

Outside the house there was already, at six o'clock, noise and confusion. Last evening a train from Washington had brought to the village Abraham Lincoln; for several days other trains had been bringing less distinguished guests, until thousands thronged the little town. This morning the tract of land between Mary Bowman's house and the village cemetery was to be dedicated for the burial of the Union dead, who were to be laid there in sweeping semicircles round a centre on which a great monument was to rise.

But of the dedication, of the President of the United States, of his distinguished associates, of the great crowds, of the soldiers, of the crape-banded banners, Mary Bowman and her children would see nothing. Mary Bowman would sit in her little wrecked kitchen with her children. For to her the President of the United States and others in high places who prosecuted war or who tolerated war, who called for young men to fight, were hateful. To Mary Bowman the crowds of curious persons who coveted a sight of the great battle-fields were ghouls; their eyes wished to gloat upon ruin, upon fragments of the weapons of war, upon torn bits of the habiliments of soldiers; their feet longed to sink into the loose ground of hastily made graves; the discovery of a partially covered body was precious to them.

Mary Bowman knew that field! From Culp's Hill to the McPherson farm, from Big Round Top to the poorhouse, she had traveled it, searching, searching, with frantic, insane disregard of positions or of possibility. Her husband could not have fallen here among the Eleventh Corps, he could not lie here among the unburied dead of the Louisiana Tigers! If he was in the battle at all, it was at the Angle that he fell.

She had not been able to begin her search immediately after the battle because there were forty wounded men in her little house; she could not prosecute it with any diligence even later, when the soldiers had been carried to the hospitals, in the Presbyterian Church, the Catholic Church, the two Lutheran churches, the Seminary, the College, the Court-House, and the great tented hospital on the York road. Nurses were here, Sisters of Mercy were here, compassionate women were here by the score; but still she was needed, with all the other women of the village, to nurse, to bandage, to comfort, to pray with those who must die. Little Mary Bowman had assisted at the amputation of limbs, she had helped to control strong men torn by the frenzy of delirium, she had tended poor bodies which had almost lost all semblance to humanity. Neither she nor any of the other women of the village counted themselves especially heroic; the delicate wife of the judge, the petted daughter of the doctor, the gently bred wife of the preacher forgot that fainting at the sight of blood was one of the distinguishing qualities of their sex; they turned back their sleeves and repressed their tears, and, shoulder to shoulder with Mary Bowman and her Irish neighbor, Hannah Casey, they fed the hungry and healed the sick and clothed the naked. If Mary Bowman had been herself, she might have laughed at the sight of her dresses cobbled into trousers, her skirts wrapped round the shoulders of sick men. But neither then nor ever after did Mary laugh at any incident of that summer.

Hannah Casey laughed, and by and by she began to boast. Meade, Hancock, Slocum, were non-combatants beside her. She had fought whole companies of Confederates, she had wielded bayonets, she had assisted at the spiking of a gun, she was Barbara Frietchie and Moll Pitcher combined. But all her lunacy could not make Mary Bowman smile.

Of John Bowman no trace could be found. No one could tell her anything about him, to her frantic letters no one responded. Her old friend, the village judge, wrote letters also, but could get no reply. Her husband was missing; it was probable that he lay somewhere upon this field, the field upon which they had wandered as lovers.

In midsummer a few trenches were opened, and Mary, unknown to her friends, saw them opened. At the uncovering of the first great pit, she actually helped with her own hands. For those of this generation who know nothing of war, that fact may be written down, to be passed over lightly. The soldiers, having been on other battle-fields, accepted her presence without comment. She did not cry, she only helped doggedly, and looked at what they found. That, too, may be written down for a generation which has not known war.

Immediately, an order went forth that no graves, large or small, were to be opened before cold weather. The citizens were panic-stricken with fear of an epidemic; already there were many cases of dysentery and typhoid. Now that the necessity for daily work for the wounded was past, the village became nervous, excited, irritable. Several men and boys were killed while trying to open unexploded shells; their deaths added to the general horror. There were constant visitors who sought husbands, brothers, sweet-hearts; with these the Gettysburg women were still able to weep, for them they were still able to care; but the constant demand for entertainment for the curious annoyed those who wished to be left alone to recover from the shock of battle. Gettysburg was prostrate, bereft of many of its worldly possessions, drained to the bottom of its well of sympathy. Its schools must be opened, its poor must be helped. Cold weather was coming and there were many, like Mary Bowman, who owned no longer any quilts or blankets, who had given away their clothes, their linen, even the precious sheets which their grandmothers had spun. Gettysburg grudged nothing, wished nothing back, it asked only to be left in peace.

When the order was given to postpone the opening of graves till fall, Mary began to go about the battle-field searching alone. Her good, obedient children stayed at home in the house or in the little field. They were beginning to grow thin and wan, they were shivering in the hot August weather, but their mother did not see. She gave them a great deal more to eat than she had herself, and they had far better clothes than her blood-stained motley.

She went about the battle-field with her eyes on the ground, her feet treading gently, anticipating loose soil or some sudden obstacle. Sometimes she stooped suddenly. To fragments of shells, to bits of blue or gray cloth, to cartridge belts or broken muskets, she paid no heed; at sight of pitiful bits of human bodies she shuddered. But there lay also upon that field little pocket Testaments, letters, trinkets, photographs. John had had her photograph and the children's, and surely he must have had some of the letters she had written!

But poor Mary found nothing.

One morning, late in August, she sat beside her kitchen table with her head on her arm. The first of the scarlet gum leaves had begun to drift down from the shattered trees; it would not be long before the ground would be covered, and those depressed spots, those tiny wooden headstones, those fragments of blue and gray be hidden. The thought smothered her. She did not cry, she had not cried at all. Her soul seemed hardened, stiff, like the terrible wounds for which she had helped to care.

Suddenly, hearing a sound, Mary had looked up. The judge stood in the doorway; he had known all about her since she was a little girl; something in his face told her that he knew also of her terrible search. She did not ask him to sit down, she said nothing at all. She had been a loquacious person, she had become an abnormally silent one. Speech hurt her.

The judge looked round the little kitchen. The rent in the wall was still unmended, the chairs were broken; there was nothing else to be seen but the table and the rusty stove and the thin, friendless-looking children standing by the door. It was the house not only of poverty and woe, but of neglect.

"Mary," said the judge, "how do you mean to live?"

Mary's thin, sunburned hand stirred a little as it lay on the table.

"I do not know."

"You have these children to feed and clothe and you must furnish your house again. Mary—" The judge hesitated for a moment. John Bowman had been a school-teacher, a thrifty, ambitious soul, who would have thought it a disgrace for his wife to earn her living. The judge laid his hand on the thin hand beside him. "Your children must have food, Mary. Come down to my house, and my wife will give you work. Come now."

Slowly Mary had risen from her chair, and smoothed down her dress and obeyed him. Down the street they went together, seeing fences still prone, seeing walls torn by shells, past the houses where the shock of battle had hastened the deaths of old persons and little children, and had disappointed the hearts of those who longed for a child, to the judge's house in the square. There wagons stood about, loaded with wheels of cannon, fragments of burst caissons, or with long, narrow, pine boxes, brought from the railroad, to be stored against the day of exhumation. Men were laughing and shouting to one another, the driver of the wagon on which the long boxes were piled cracked his whip as he urged his horses.

Hannah Casey congratulated her neighbor heartily upon her finding work.

"That'll fix you up," she assured her.

She visited Mary constantly, she reported to her the news of the war, she talked at length of the coming of the President.

"I'm going to see him," she announced. "I'm going to shake him by the hand. I'm going to say, 'Hello, Abe, you old rail-splitter, God bless you!' Then the bands'll play, and the people will march, and the Johnny Rebs will hear 'em in their graves."

Mary Bowman put her hands over her ears.

"I believe in my soul you'd let 'em all rise from the dead!"

"I would!" said Mary Bowman hoarsely. "I would!"

"Well, not so Hannah Casey! Look at me garden tore to bits! Look at me beds, stripped to the ropes!"

And Hannah Casey departed to her house.

Details of the coming celebration penetrated to the ears of Mary Bowman whether she wished it or not, and the gathering crowds made themselves known. They stood upon her porch, they examined the broken shutters, they wished to question her. But Mary Bowman would answer no questions, would not let herself be seen. To her the thing was horrible. She saw the battling hosts, she heard once more the roar of artillery, she smelled the smoke of battle, she was torn by its confusion. Besides, she seemed to feel in the ground beneath her a feebly stirring, suffering, ghastly host. They had begun again to open the trenches, and she had looked into them.

Now, on the morning of Thursday, the nineteenth of November, her children dressed themselves and came down the steps. They had begun to have a little plumpness and color, but the dreadful light in their mother's eyes was still reflected in theirs. On the lower step they hesitated, looking at the door. Outside stood the judge, who had found time in the multiplicity of his cares, to come to the little house.

He spoke with kind but firm command.

"Mary," said he, "you must take these children to hear President Lincoln."

"What!" cried Mary.

"You must take these children to the exercises."

"I cannot!" cried Mary. "I cannot! I cannot!"

"You must!" The judge came into the room. "Let me hear no more of this going about. You are a Christian, your husband was a Christian. Do you want your children to think it is a wicked thing to die for their country? Do as I tell you, Mary."

Mary got up from her chair, and put on her children all the clothes they had, and wrapped about her own shoulders a little black coat which the judge's wife had given her. Then, as one who steps into an unfriendly sea, she started out with them into the great crowd. Once more, poor Mary said to herself, she would obey. She had seen the platform; by going round through the citizen's cemetery she could get close to it.

The November day was bright and warm, but Mary and her children shivered. Slowly she made her way close to the platform, patiently she stood and waited. Sometimes she stood with shut eyes, swaying a little. On the moonlit night of the third day of battle she had ventured from her house down toward the square to try to find some brandy for the dying men about her, and as in a dream she had seen a tall general, mounted upon a white horse with muffled hoofs, ride down the street. Bending from his saddle he had spoken, apparently to the empty air.

"Up, boys, up!"

There had risen at his command thousands of men lying asleep on pavement and street, and quietly, in an interminable line, they had stolen out like dead men toward the Seminary, to join their comrades and begin the long, long march to Hagerstown. It seemed to her that all about her dead men might rise now to look with reproach upon these strangers who disturbed their rest.

The procession was late, the orator of the day was delayed, but still Mary waited, swaying a little in her place. Presently the great guns roared forth a welcome, the bands played, the procession approached. On horseback, erect, gauntleted, the President of the United States drew rein beside the platform, and, with the orator and the other famous men, dismounted. There were great cheers, there were deep silences, there were fresh volleys of artillery, there was new music.

Of it all, Mary Bowman heard but little. Remembering the judge, whom she saw now near the President, she tried to obey the spirit as well as the letter of his command; she directed her children to look, she turned their heads toward the platform.

Men spoke and prayed and sang, and Mary stood still in her place. The orator of the day described the battle, he eulogized the dead, he proved the righteousness of this great war; his words fell upon Mary's ears unheard. If she had been asked who he was, she might have said vaguely that he was Mr. Lincoln. When he ended, she was ready to go home. There was singing; now she could slip away, through the gaps in the cemetery fence. She had done as the judge commanded and now she would go back to her house.

With her arms about her children, she started away. Then someone who stood near by took her by the hand.

"Madam!" said he, "the President is going to speak!"

Half turning, Mary looked back. The thunder of applause made her shiver, made her even scream, it was so like that other thunderous sound which she would hear forever. She leaned upon her little children heavily, trying to get her breath, gasping, trying to keep her consciousness. She fixed her eyes upon the rising figure before her, she clung to the sight of him as a drowning swimmer in deep waters, she struggled to fix her thoughts upon him. Exhaustion, grief, misery threatened to engulf her, she hung upon him in desperation.

Slowly, as one who is old or tired or sick at heart, he rose to his feet, the President of the United States, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, the hope of his country. Then he stood waiting. In great waves of sound the applause rose and died and rose again. He waited quietly. The winner of debate, the great champion of a great cause, the veteran in argument, the master of men, he looked down upon the throng. The clear, simple things he had to say were ready in his mind, he had thought them out, written out a first draft of them in Washington, copied it here in Gettysburg. It is probable that now, as he waited to speak, his mind traveled to other things, to the misery, the wretchedness, the slaughter of this field, to the tears of mothers, the grief of widows, the orphaning of little children.

Slowly, in his clear voice, he said what little he had to say. To the weary crowd, settling itself into position once more, the speech seemed short; to the cultivated who had been listening to the elaborate periods of great oratory, it seemed commonplace, it seemed a speech which any one might have made. But it was not so with Mary Bowman, nor with many other unlearned persons. Mary Bowman's soul seemed to smooth itself out like a scroll, her hands lightened their clutch on her children, the beating of her heart slackened, she gasped no more.

She could not have told exactly what he said, though later she read it and learned it and taught it to her children and her children's children. She only saw him, felt him, breathed him in, this great, common, kindly man. His gaze seemed to rest upon her; it was not impossible, it was even probable, that during the hours that had passed he had singled out that little group so near him, that desolate woman in her motley dress, with her children clinging about her. He said that the world would not forget this field, these martyrs; he said it in words which Mary Bowman could understand, he pointed to a future for which there was a new task.

"Daughter!" he seemed to say to her from the depths of trouble, of responsibility, of care greater than her own,—"Daughter, be of good comfort!"

Unhindered now, amid the cheers, across ground which seemed no longer to stir beneath her feet, Mary Bowman went back to her house. There, opening the shutters, she bent and solemnly kissed her little children, saying to herself that henceforth they must have more than food and raiment; they must be given some joy in life.

V

GUNNER CRISWELL

On an afternoon in late September, 1910, a shifting crowd, sometimes numbering a few score, sometimes a few hundred, stared at a massive monument on the battle-field of Gettysburg. The monument was not yet finished, sundry statues were lacking, and the ground about it was trampled and bare. But the main edifice was complete, the plates, on which were cast the names of all the soldiers from Pennsylvania who had fought in the battle, were in place, and near at hand the platform, erected for the dedicatory services on the morrow, was being draped with flags. The field of Gettysburg lacks no tribute which can be paid its martyrs.

The shifting crowd was part of the great army of veterans and their friends who had begun to gather for the dedication; these had come early to seek out their names, fixed firmly in enduring bronze on the great monument. Among them were two old men. The name of one was Criswell; he had been a gunner in Battery B, and was now blind. The explosion which had paralyzed the optic nerve had not disfigured him; his smooth-shaven face in its frame of thick, white hair was unmarred, and with his erect carriage and his strong frame he was extraordinarily handsome. The name of his friend, bearded, untidy, loquacious, was Carolus Depew.

Gettysburg opens wide not only its hospitable arms, but its heart, to the old soldier. Even now, after almost fifty years, the shadow of war is not yet fled away, the roaring of the guns of battle is not stilled. The old soldier finds himself appreciated, admired, cared for, beyond a merely adequate return for the money he brings into the town. Here he can talk of the battle with the proprietor of the hotel at which he stays, with the college professor, with the urchin on the street. Any citizen will leave his work to help find a certain house where wounds were dressed, or where women gave out bread, fresh and hot from the oven; or a certain well, from which life-saving, delicious drinks were quaffed. When there are great excursions or dedications such as this, the town is decorated, there is waving of flags, there are bursts of song.

No stretching of hospitable arms could shelter the vast crowd which gathered upon this occasion. The boarding-houses which accommodated ten guests during the ordinary summer traffic now took thirty, the hotels set up as many cot-beds as their halls would hold, the students of the college and the theological seminary shared their rooms or gave them up entirely, in faculty houses every room was filled, and all church doors were thrown wide. Yet many men—and old men—spent the night upon the street.

Gunner Criswell wondered often whether many lives ran like his, up and up to a sharp peak of happiness, then plunged down, down to inexpressible misery. As a boy he had been intensely happy, eager, ambitious, alive to all the glory of the world. He had married the girl whom he loved, and had afterward enlisted, scorning any fears that he might not return. On the second day of July, 1863, on his twenty-third birthday, he had lost his sight in an explosion on the battle-field of Gettysburg; on the same day his young wife had died in their faraway corner of the state, leaving a helpless baby to a blind and sick father.

To-day the daughter was middle-aged, the father old. They lived together on their little farm in Greene County, Ellen managing the farm and doing much of the work, Gunner Criswell making baskets. War had taken his sight, his wife, all his prospects for life; it had left him, he said, Ellen, and the fresh, clear mountain air, a strong pair of hands, and his own soul. Life had settled at last to a quiet level of peace. He had learned to read the raised language of the blind, but he could not afford many books. He was poor; owing to an irregularity in his enlistment the Government had not given him a pension, nor had any one taken the trouble to have the matter straightened out. The community was small and scattered, few persons knew him, and no Congressman needed his vote in that solidly Republican district. Nor was he entirely certain that the giving of pensions to those who could work was not a form of pauperization. He, for instance, had been pretty well handicapped, yet he had got on. He said to himself often that when one went to war one offered everything. If there was in his heart any faint, lingering bitterness because his country had done nothing for him, who had given her so much, he checked it sternly.

And, besides, he said often to himself with amusement, he had Carolus Depew!

It was Carolus who had told him, one evening in July, about the Pennsylvania monument. Carolus had served in a different regiment, without injury and with a thousand brave adventures. He was talking about them now.

"I'm going! I'm going back to that place. I could find it. I know where I knocked that feller down with the butt of my gun when my ammunition gave out. I know exactly where I stood when the captain said, 'Give 'em hell, Carolus!' The captain and me, we was pretty intimate."

The blind man smiled, his busy hands going on with their unending work. When he smiled, his face was indescribably beautiful; one's heart ached for the woman who fifty years ago had had to die and leave him.

"Ellen!" he called.

Ellen appeared in the doorway, in her short, unbecoming gingham dress. She had inherited none of her father's beauty, and the freshness of her youth was gone. She looked at her father kindly enough, but her voice was harsh. Ellen's life, too, had suffered from war.

"Ellen, Carolus wants me to go with him to Gettysburg in September. A great monument is to be dedicated, and Carolus says our names are to be on it. May I go?"

Ellen turned swiftly away. Sometimes her father's cheerfulness nearly broke her heart.

"I guess you can go if you want to."

"Thank you, Ellen."

"I've reckoned it all out," said Carolus. "We can do it for twenty dollars. We ought to get transportation. Somebody ought to make a present to the veterans, the Government ought to, or the trusts, or the railroads."

"Where will we stay?" asked Gunner Criswell. His hands trembled suddenly and he laid down the stiff reeds.

"They'll have places. I bet they'll skin us for board, though. The minute I get there I'm going straight to that monument to hunt for my name. They'll have us all arranged by regiments and companies. I'll find yours for you."

The hand of the blind man opened and closed. He could find his own name, thank Heaven! he could touch it, could press his palm upon it, know that it was there, feel it in his own soul—Adam Criswell. His calm vanished, his passive philosophy melted in the heat of old desires relit, desire for fame, for power, for life. He was excited, discontented, happy yet unhappy. Such an experience would crown his life; it would be all the more wonderful because it had never been dreamed of. That night he could not sleep. He saw his name, Adam Criswell, written where it would stand for generations to come. From that time on he counted the days, almost the hours, until he should start for Gettysburg.

Carolus Depew was a selfish person, for all his apparent devotion to his friend. Having arrived at Gettysburg, he had found the monument, and he had impatiently hunted for the place of Gunner Criswell's Battery B, and guided his hand to the raised letters, and then had left him alone.

"I've found it!" he shouted, a moment later. "'Carolus Depew, Corporal,' big as life. 'Carolus Depew, Corporal'! What do you think of that, say! It'll be here in a hundred years, 'Carolus Depew, Corporal'!"

Then Carolus wandered a little farther along the line of tablets and round to the other side of the great monument. Gunner Criswell called to him lightly, as though measuring the distance he had gone. When Carolus did not answer, Gunner Criswell spoke to a boy who had offered him souvenir postal cards. It was like him to take his joy quietly, intensely.

"Will you read the names of this battery for me?" he asked.

The boy sprang as though he had received a command. It was not only the man's blindness which won men and women and children; his blindness was seldom apparent; it was his air of power and strength.

The boy read the list slowly and distinctly, and then refused the nickel which Criswell offered him. In a moment Carolus returned, still thrilled by his own greatness, as excited as a child.

"We must hunt a place to stay now," he said. "This is a grand spot. There's monuments as far as the eye can reach. Come on. Ain't you glad to walk with 'Carolus Depew, Corporal'?"

It was three o'clock in the afternoon when Carolus left Gunner Criswell on a doorstep in Gettysburg and went in search of rooms. At a quarter to six the blind man still sat on the same spot. He was seventy years old and he was tired, and the cold step chilled him through. He did not dare to move; it seemed to him that thousands of persons passed and repassed. If he went away, Carolus could not find him. And where should he go? He felt tired and hungry and worn and old; his great experience of the afternoon neither warmed nor fed him; he wished himself back in his own place with his work and his peace of mind and Ellen.

Then, suddenly, he realized that some one was speaking to him. The voice was a woman's, low-pitched, a little imperious, the voice of one not accustomed to be kept waiting.

"Will you please move and let me ring this door-bell?"

Gunner Criswell sprang to his feet. He did not like to acknowledge his infirmity; it seemed always like bidding for sympathy. But now the words rushed from him, words than which there are none more heartrending.

"Madam, forgive me! I am blind."

A perceptible interval passed before the woman answered. Once Gunner Criswell thought she had gone away.

Instead she was staring at him, her heart throbbing. She laid her hand on his arm.

"Why do you sit here on the steps? Have you no place to stay?"

Gunner Criswell told her about Carolus.

"You must come to my house," she invited.

Gunner Criswell explained that he could not leave his friend. "He would be worried if he couldn't find me. He"—Gunner Criswell turned his head, then he smiled—"he is coming now. I can hear him."

Protesting, scolding, Carolus came down the street. He was with several other veterans, and all were complaining bitterly about the lack of accommodations. The lady looked at Carolus's untidiness, then back at the blind man.

"I can take you both," she said. "My name is Mrs. James, and I live on the college campus. Anybody can direct you. Tell the maid I sent you."

Mrs. James's house was large, and in it the two old men found a comfortable room, distinguished and delightful company, and a heart-warming dinner. There were five other guests, who like themselves had neglected to engage rooms beforehand—a famous general of the Civil War and four lesser officers. Professor James made them all welcome, and the two small boys made it plain that this was the greatest occasion of their lives. The dinner-table was arranged in a way which Carolus Depew had never seen; it was lit by candles and decked with the best of the asters from Mrs. James's garden. The officers wore their uniforms, Mrs. James her prettiest dress. Carolus appreciated all the grandeur, but he insisted to the blind man that it was only their due. It was paying a debt which society owed the veteran.

"This professor didn't fight," argued Carolus. "Why shouldn't he do this for us? They oughtn't to charge us a cent. But I bet they will."

Gunner Criswell, refreshed and restored, was wholly grateful. He listened to the pleasant talk, he heard with delight the lovely voice of his hostess, he felt beside him the fresh young body of his hostess's little son. Even the touch of the silver and china pleased him. His wife had brought from her home a few plates as delicate, a few spoons as heavy, and they had had long since to be sold.

Carolus helped the blind man constantly during the meal; he guided his hand to the bread-plate and gave him portions of food, all of which was entirely unnecessary. The blind man was much more deft than Carolus, and the maid was careful and interested and kind. All the guests except the general watched the blind man with admiration. The general talked busily and constantly at the other end of the table; it was not to be expected that he should notice a private soldier.

It was the general who had first proposed inscribing the names of all the soldiers on the great monument; the monument, though he was not a member of the building committee, was his dearest enterprise. Since the war the general had become a statistician; he was interested in lists and tabulations, he enjoyed making due return for value received, he liked to provide pensions, to place old soldiers comfortably in Soldiers' Homes. The war was long past; his memory had begun to grow dim; to his mind the lives of the soldiers would be completed, rounded, by this tribute, as his own would be by the statue of himself which should some day rise upon this field. It was he who had compiled the lists for this last and greatest roster; about it he talked constantly.

Presently, as the guests finished their coffee, one of the lesser officers asked the man next him a question about a charge, and then Professor James asked another, and the war changed suddenly from a thing of statistics and lists and pensions to what it actually was, a thing of horror, of infinite sacrifice, of heroism. Men drilled and marched and fought and suffered and prayed and were slain. The faces of the _raconteurs_ glowed, the eager voices of the questioners trembled. Once one of the officers made an effort to draw Gunner Criswell into speech, but Gunner Criswell was shy. He sat with his arm round the little boy, the candle-light shining on his beautiful face, listening with his whole soul. With Carolus it was different. Carolus had several times firmly to be interrupted.

In the morning Mrs. James took the blind man for a drive. The air was as fresh and clear as the air of his own mountains; the little boy sat on a stool between his feet and rested his shoulder against his knee. Mrs. James knew the field thoroughly; she made as plain as possible its topography, the main lines, the great charges, the open fields between the two ridges, the mighty rocks of Devil's Den, the almost impenetrable thickets. To Gunner Criswell, Gettysburg had been a little smoke-o'erlaid town seen faintly at the end of a long march, its recollection dimmed afterward by terrible physical pain. He realized now for the first time the great territory which the battle-lines inclosed, he understood the titanic grandeur of the event of which he had been a part, he breathed in also the present and enduring peace. He touched the old muzzle-loading cannon; the little boy guided his hand to the tiny tombstones in the long lines of graves of the unknown; he stood where Lincoln had stood, weary, heart-sick, despairing, in the fall of '63.

Then, strangely for him, Gunner Criswell began to talk. Something within him seemed to have broken, hidden springs of feeling seemed to well up in his heart. It was the talk of a man at peace with himself, reconciled, happy, conscious of his own value, sure of his place in the scheme of things. He talked as he had never talked in his life—of his youth, of his hopes, of his wife, of Ellen. It was almost more than Mrs. James could endure.

"It is coming back here that makes you feel like this," she said brokenly. "You realize how tremendous it was, and you know that you did your part and that you haven't been forgotten, that you were important in a great cause."

"Yes, ma'am," answered Gunner Criswell, in his old-fashioned way. "It is that exactly."

Mrs. James had little respect for rank as such. She and the great general, the four lesser officers, her husband and her two boys, were to drive together to the dedication that afternoon and to have seats on the platform, and thither she took Private Criswell. Carolus Depew was not sorry to be relieved of the care of the blind man; he had found some old comrades and was crazy with excitement.

"It is a good thing that she invited you," said Carolus, "because we are going to march, just like we used to, and you couldn't very well."

The dedication exercises were not long. To the blind man there was the singing which stirred his heart, there was the cool air in his face, there was the touch of the little boy's hand, there was Mrs. James's voice in explanation or description.

"There is the Governor!" cried Mrs. James. "He will pass right beside you. There is the Secretary of War. You can hear him talking to the Governor if you listen carefully. That deep voice is his. _Can_ you hear?"

"Oh, yes," answered the blind man happily.

He heard the speeches, he heard the music, he could tell by the wild shouting when the great enveloping flag drifted to the ground and the monument stood wholly unveiled; he could feel presently the vast crowd beginning to depart. He stood quietly while the great general near him laughed and talked, receiving the congratulations of great men, presenting the great men to Mrs. James; he heard other bursts of cheering, other songs. He was unspeakably happy.

Then suddenly he felt a strange hand on his arm. The general was close to him, was speaking to him; there was a silence all about them. The general turned him a little as he spoke toward the great bronze tablets with their record of the brave.

"You were in the army?" asked the general.

"Yes, sir."

"In what regiment?"

"I was in Battery B, sir."

"Then," said the general, "let us find your name."

Mrs. James came forward to the blind man's side. The general wished to make visible, actual, the rewarding of the soldier, and she was passionately thankful that it was upon this man that the general's eye had fallen.

But Gunner Criswell, to her astonishment, held back. Then he said an extraordinary thing for one who hesitated always to make his infirmity plain, and for one who could read the raised letters, who had read them, here on this very spot. He said again those three words, only a little less dreadful than the other three terrible words, "He is dead."

"Oh, sir," he cried, "I cannot read! I am blind!"

The general flung his arm across the blind man's shoulder. He was a tall man also, and magnificently made. It gave one a thrill to see them stand together.

"I will read for you."

"But, sir—" Still Gunner Criswell hung back, his hand clutching the little boy's, his beautiful, sightless eyes turned toward Mrs. James, as though he would have given anything to save her, to save any of them, pain. "It is not a question of reward, sir. I would endure it all again, gladly—everything. I don't count it, sir. But do not look for my name. It is chance, accident. It might have happened to any one, sir. It is not your fault. But my name has been omitted."

VI

THE SUBSTITUTE

It was nine o'clock on the eve of Memorial Day, and pandemonium reigned on the platform of the little railroad station at Gettysburg. A heavy thunderstorm, which had brought down a score of fine trees on the battle-field, and had put entirely out of service the electric light plant of the town, was just over. In five minutes the evening train from Harrisburg would be due, and with it the last delegation to the convention of the Grand Army of the Republic.

A spectator might have thought it doubtful whether the arriving delegation would be able to set foot upon the crowded platform. In the dim light, representatives from the hotels and boarding-houses fought each other for places on the steps beyond which the town council had forbidden them to go. Back of them, along the pavement, their unwatched horses stood patiently, too tired to make even the slight movement which would have inextricably tangled the wheels of the omnibuses and tourist wagons. On the platform were a hundred old soldiers, some of them still hale, others crippled and disabled, and as many women, the "Ladies of the Relief Corps," come to assist in welcoming the strangers. The railroad employees elbowed the crowd good-naturedly, as their duties took them from one part of the station to another; small boys chased each other, racing up the track to catch the first glimpse of the headlight of the train; and presently all joined in a wild and joyous singing of "My Country, 'tis of Thee."

High above the turmoil, on a baggage truck which had been pushed against the wall, stood "Old Man Daggett," whistling. He was apparently unaware of the contrast between the whiteness of his beard and the abandoned gayety of his tune, which was "We won't go home until morning"; he was equally unaware or indifferent to the care with which the crowd avoided his neighborhood. But though he had been drinking, he was not drunk. He looked down upon the crowd, upon his former companions in the Grand Army post, who had long since repudiated him because of the depths to which he had fallen; he thought of the days when he had struggled with the other guides for a place at the edge of the platform, and, wretched as was his present condition, he continued to whistle.

When, presently, the small boys shouted, "There she comes!" the old man added his cheer to the rest, purely for the joy of hearing his own voice. The crowd lurched forward, the station agent ordered them back, the engine whistled, her bell rang, the old soldiers called wildly, "Hello, comrades!" "Hurrah, comrades!" and the train stopped. Then ensued a wilder pandemonium. There were multitudinous cries:—

"Here you are, the Keystone House!"

"Here you are, the Palace, the official hotel of Gettysburg!"

"The Battle Hotel, the best in the city!"

There were shouts also from the visitors.

"Hello, comrades! Hurrah! Hurrah!"

"Did you ever see such a storm?"

"Hurrah! Hurrah!"

At first it seemed impossible to bring order out of the chaos. The human particles would rush about forever, wearing themselves into nothingness by futile contact with one another. Presently, however, one of the carriages drove away and then another, and the crowd began to thin. Old Daggett watched them with cheerful interest, rejoicing when Jakie Barsinger of the Palace, or Bert Taylor of the Keystone, lost his place on the steps. By and by his eyes wandered to the other end of the dim platform. Three men stood there, watching the crowd. The sight of three prosperous visitors, unclaimed and unsolicited by the guides, seemed to rouse some latent energy in old Daggett. It was almost ten years since he had guided any one over the field. He scrambled down from the truck and approached the visitors.

"Have you gentlemen engaged rooms?" he asked. "Or a guide?"

The tallest of the three men answered. He was Ellison Brant, former Congressman, of great wealth and vast physical dimensions. His manner was genial and there was a frank cordiality in his voice which his friends admired and his enemies distrusted. His companions, both younger than himself, were two faithful henchmen, Albert Davis and Peter Hayes. They had not heard of the convention in Gettysburg, which they were visiting for the first time, and, irritated by having to travel in the same coach with the noisy veterans, they were now further annoyed by the discovery that all the hotels in the town were crowded. Brant's voice had lost entirely its cordial tone.

"Have you any rooms to recommend?"

"You can't get places at the hotels any more," answered Daggett. "But I could get you rooms."

"Where is your best hotel?"

"Right up here. We'll pass it."

"All right. Take us there first."

Brant's irritation found expression in an oath as they went up the narrow, uneven pavement. He was accustomed to obsequious porters, and his bag was heavy. It was not their guide's age which prevented Brant from giving him the burden, but the fear that he might steal off with it, down a dark alley or side street.

"There's the Keystone," said Daggett. "You can't get in there."