The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lost Guidon, by
Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

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Title: The Lost Guidon
1911

Author: Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

Release Date: November 19, 2007 [EBook #23555]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOST GUIDON ***

Produced by David Widger

THE LOST GUIDON

By Charles Egbert Craddock

1911

Night came early. It might well seem that day had fled affrighted. The
heavy masses of clouds, glooming low, which had gathered thicker and
thicker, as if crowding to witness the catastrophe, had finally shaken
asunder in the concussions of the air at the discharges of artillery,
and now the direful rain, always sequence of the shock of battle, was
steadily falling, falling, on the stricken field. Many a soldier who
might have survived his wounds would succumb to exposure to the elements
during the night, debarred the tardy succor that must needs await his
turn. One of the surgeons at their hasty work at the field hospital,
under the shelter of the cliffs on the slope, paused to note the presage
of doom and death, and to draw a long breath before he adjusted himself
anew to the grim duties of the scalpel in his hand. His face was set and
haggard, less with a realization of the significance of the scene--for
he was used to its recurrence--than simply with a physical reflection of
horror, as if it were glassed in a mirror. A phenomenon that had earlier
caught his attention in the landscape appealed again to his notice,
perhaps because the symptom was not in his line.

"Looks like a case of dementia," he observed to the senior surgeon,
standing near at hand.

The superior officer adjusted his field-glass. "Looks like 'Death on the
White Horse'!" he responded.

Down the highway, at a slow pace, rode a cavalryman wearing a gray
uniform, with a sergeant's chevrons, and mounted on a steed good in his
day, but whose day was gone. A great clot of blood had gathered on his
broad white chest, where a bayonet had thrust him deep. Despite his
exhaustion, he moved forward at the urgency of his ri