hat he had
proposed to recuperate the tottering structure, and make it serviceable
to the army, I felt a regret that such peaceful ambitions should have
ever been overruled by the call to arms.

While we stood at the mill window, watching the long stretches of white
tents and speculating upon the results of war, we saw several men
running across the road toward a hill-top cottage, where General Meade
made his quarters. A small group was collected at the cottage,
reconnoitring something through their telescopes. As I hastened in that
direction, I heard confused voices, thus: "No, it isn't!" "It is!" "Can
you make out his shoulder-bar?" "What is the color of his coat?" "Gray!"
"No, it's butternut!" "Has he a musket!" "Yes, he is levelling it!" At
this the group scattered in every direction. "Pshaw!" said one, "we are
out of range; besides, it is a telescope that he has. By----, it is a
Rebel, reconnoitring our camp!" There was a manifest sensation here, and
one man wondered how he had passed the picket. Another suggested that he
might be accompanied by a troop, and a third convulsed the circle by
declaring that there were six other Rebels visible in a woods to the
left. Mr. Fogg had meantime come up and proffered me a field-glass,
through which I certainly made out a person in gray, standing in the
middle of the road just at the ridge of a hill. When I dropped my glass
I saw him distinctly with the naked eye. He was probably a mile distant,
and his gray vesture was little relieved by the blue haze of the forest.

"He is going," exclaimed a private, excitedly; "where's the man that was
to try a lead on him?" Several started impulsively for their pieces, and
some officers called for their horses. "There go his knees!" "His body
is behind the hill!" "Now his head----"

"Crack! crack! crack!" spluttered musketry from the edge of the mill,
and like as many rockets darted a score of horsemen through the creek
and up the steep. Directly a faint hurrah pealed from the camp nearest
the mill. It passed to the next camp and the next; for all were now
earnestly watching; and finally a medley of cheers shook the air and the
ear. Thousands of brave men were shouting the requiem of one paltry
life. The rash fool had bought with his temerity a bullet in the brain.
When I saw him--dusty and still bleeding--he was beset by a full
regiment of idlers, to whom death had neither awe nor respect. They
talked of the delicate shot, as connoisse