to the pier
and left to be beaten against the wooden pillars by the waves for four
hours before four comrades came and took them out and buried them. Such
was the dreadful callousness that sweeps through the human heart when
war begins, and he was under its influence himself, and long afterward
he remembered with shame his idle and half-scientific and useless
curiosity about the wounded man at his elbow. As he turned his head, the
soldier gave a long, deep, peaceful sigh, as though he had gone to
sleep. With pity now Grafton turned to him--and he had gone to sleep,
but it was his last sleep.

"Look," said the other man. Grafton looked upward. Along the trenches,
and under a hot fire, moved little Jerry Carter, with figure bent, hands
clasped behind him--with the manner, for all the world, of a deacon in a
country graveyard looking for inscriptions on tombstones.

Now and then a bullet would have a hoarse sound--that meant that it had
ricochetted. At intervals of three or four minutes a huge, old-fashioned
projectile would labour through the air, visible all the time, and crash
harmlessly into the woods. The Americans called it the "long yellow
feller," and sometimes a negro trooper would turn and with a yell shoot
at it as it passed over. A little way off, a squad of the Tenth Cavalry
was digging a trench--close to the top of the hill. Now and then one
would duck--particularly the one on the end. He had his tongue in the
corner of his mouth, was twirling his pick over his shoulder like a
railroad hand, and grunting with every stroke. Grafton could hear him.

"Foh Gawd (huh!) never thought (huh!) I'd git to love (huh!) a pick
befoh!" Grafton broke into a laugh.

"You see the charge?"

"Part of it."

"That tall fellow with the blue handkerchief around his throat,
bare-headed, long hair?"

"Well--" the other man stopped for a moment. His eye had caught sight of
a figure on the ground--on the top of the trench, and with the profile
of his face between him and the afterglow, and his tone changed--"there
he is!"

Grafton pressed closer. "What, that the fellow?" There was the
handkerchief, the head was bare, the hair long and dark. The man's eyes
were closed, but he was breathing. Below them at that moment they heard
the surgeon say:

"Up there." And two hospital men, with a litter, came toward them and
took up the body. As they passed, Grafton recoiled.

"Good God!" It was Crittenden.

And, sitting on the edge