He approached the bed, cap in hand.
“He is very old,” she said; “he was a soldier of Washington. He desires to see a soldier of the Union.”
And now the bandmaster perceived the occupant of the bed, a palsied, bloodless phantom of the past—an inert, bedridden, bony thing that looked dead until its deep eyes opened and fixed themselves on him.
“This is a Union soldier, grandfather,” she said, kneeling on the floor beside him. And to the bandmaster she said in a low voice: “Would you mind taking his hand? He cannot move.”
The bandmaster bent stiffly above the bed and took the old man’s hand in his.
The sunlit room trembled in the cannonade.
“That is all,” said the girl simply. She took the fleshless hand, kissed it, and laid it on the bedspread. “A soldier of Washington,” she said dreamily. “I am glad he has seen you—I think he understands: but he is very, very old.”
She lingered a moment to touch the white hair with her hand; the bandmaster stepped back to let her pass, then put on his cap, hooked his sabre, turned squarely toward the bed and saluted.
The phantom watched him as a dying eagle watches; then the slim hand of the granddaughter fell on the bandmaster’s arm, and he turned and clanked out into the open air.
The boy stood waiting for them, and as they appeared, he caught their hands in each of his, talking all the while and walking with them to the gateway, where pony and charger stood, nose to nose under the trees.
“If you need anybody to dash about carrying dispatches,” the boy ran on, “why, I’ll do it for you. My father was a soldier, and I’m going to be one, and I——”
“Billy,” said the bandmaster abruptly, “when we charge, go up on that hill and watch us. If we don’t come back, you must be ready to act a man’s part. Your sister counts on you.”
They stood a moment there together, saying nothing. Presently some mounted officers on the hill wheeled their horses and came spurring toward the column drawn up along the road. A trumpet spoke briskly; the bandmaster turned to the boy’s sister, looked straight into her eyes, and took her hand.
“I think we’re going,” he said; “I am trying to thank you—I don’t know how. Good-by.”
“Is it a charge?” cried the boy.
“Good-by,” said the bandmaster, smiling, holding the boy’s hand tightly. Then he mounted, touched his cap, wheeled, and trotted off, freeing his sabre with his right hand.
The colonel had already drawn his sabre, the chief bugler sat his saddle, bugle lifted, waiting. A loud order, repeated from squadron to squadron, ran down the line; the restive horses wheeled, trampled forward, and halted.
“Draw—sabres!”
The air shrilled with the swish of steel.
Far down the road horsemen were galloping in—the returning pickets.
“Forward!”
They were moving.
“Steady—right dress!” taken up in turn by the company officers—“steady—right dress!”
The bandmaster swung his sabre forward; the mounted band followed.
Far away across the level fields something was stirring; the colonel saw it and turned in his saddle, scanning the column that moved forward on a walk.
Half a mile, and, passing a hill, an infantry regiment rose in the shallow trenches to cheer them. Instantly the mounted band burst out into “The Girl I Left Behind Me”; an electric thrill passed along the column.
“Steady! Steady! Right dress!” rang the calm orders as a wood, almost behind them, was suddenly fringed with white smoke and a long, rolling crackle broke out.
“By fours—right-about—wheel!”
The band swung out to the right; the squadrons passed on; and—“Steady! Trot! Steady—right dress—gallop!” came the orders.
The wild music of “Garryowen” set the horses frantic—and the men, too. The band, still advancing at a walk, was dropping rapidly behind. A bullet hit kettle-drummer Pillsbury, and he fell with a grunt, doubling up across his nigh kettle-drum. A moment later Peters struck his cymbals wildly together and fell clean out of his saddle, crashing to the sod. Schwarz, his trombone pierced by a ball, swore aloud and dragged his frantic horse into line.
“Right dress!” said the bandmaster blandly, mastering his own splendid mount as a bullet grazed its shoulder.
They were in the smoke now, they heard the yelling charge ahead, the rifle fire raging, swelling to a terrific roar; and they marched forward, playing “Garryowen”—not very well, for Connor’s jaw was half gone, and Bradley’s horse was down; and the bandmaster, reeling in the saddle, parried blow on blow from a clubbed rifle, until a stunning crack alongside of the head laid him flat across his horse’s neck. And there he clung till he tumbled off, a limp, loose-limbed mass, lying in the trampled grass under the heavy pall of smoke.
Long before sunset the echoing thunder in the hills had ceased; the edge of the great battle that had skirted Sandy River, with a volley or two and an obscure cavalry charge, was ended. Beyond the hills, far away on the horizon, the men of the North were tramping forward through the Confederacy. The immense exodus had begun again; the invasion was developing; and as the tremendous red spectre receded, the hem of its smoky robe brushed Sandy River and was gone, leaving a scorched regiment or two along the railroad, and a hospital at Oxley Court House overcrowded.
In the sunset light the cavalry returned passing the white mansion on the hill. They brought in their dead and wounded on hay wagons; and the boy, pale as a spectre, looked on, while the creaking wagons passed by under the trees.
But it was his sister whose eyes caught the glitter of a gilt and yellow sleeve lying across the hay; and she dropped her brother’s hand and ran out into the road.
“Is he dead?” she asked the trooper who was driving.
“No, miss. Will you take him in?”
“Yes,” she said. “Bring him.”
The driver drew rein, wheeled his team, and drove into the great gateway. “Hospital’s plum full, ma’am,” he said. “Wait; I’ll carry him up. Head’s bust a leetle—that’s all. A day’s nussin’ will bring him into camp again.”
The trooper staggered upstairs with his burden, leaving a trail of dark, wet spots along the stairs, even up to the girl’s bed, where he placed the wounded man.
The bandmaster became conscious when they laid him on the bed, but the concussion troubled his eyes so that he was not certain that she was there until she bent close over him, looking down at him in silence.
“I thought of you—when I was falling,” he explained vaguely—“only of you.”
The color came into her face; but her eyes were steady. She set the flaring dip on the bureau and came back to the bed. “We thought of you, too,” she said.
His restless hand, fumbling the quilt, closed on hers; his eyes were shut, but his lips moved, and she bent nearer to catch his words:
“We noncombatants get into heaps of trouble—don’t we?”
“Yes,” she whispered, smiling; “but the worst is over now.”
“There is worse coming.”
“What?”
“We march—to-morrow. I shall never see you again.”
After a silence she strove gently to release her hand; but his held