nd spades and shovels, the smashed camp equipage,
broken kettles, pots and pans, the blankets, bedding, overcoats, torn
and trampled in the mire, or piled together and a dull red fire slow
creeping through the mass. Medicine-chests had been split by a blow of
the axe, the vials shivered, and a black mire made by the liquids.
Ruined weapons glinted in the sun between the furrows of a ruined
cornfield; bags of powder, boxes of cartridges, great chests of shot and
shell showed, half submerged in a tortuous creek. At the edge of the
field, there was a cannon spiked and overturned. Here, too, were dead
horses, and here, too, were the black, ill-omened birds. There was a
trench as well, a long trench just filled, with two or three little head
boards bearing some legend. "Holy Virgin!" said the courier, "if I was a
horse, a child, or a woman, I'd hate war with a holy hathred!"

Steve whined at his stirrup. "Look a-here, sir, I can't keep up! My
foot's awful sore. Gawd don't look my way, if it ain't! I ain't
desertin'. Who'd I desert to? They've all gone. I wanted a bath an' I
swum the river. The regiment'll be over directly an' I'll rejoin. Take
my oath, I will!"

"You trot along out of this plundering mess," ordered the courier. "I'm
thinking I'll drop you soon, but it won't be just here! Step lively
now!"

The two went on through the blazing afternoon sunshine, and in a
straggling wood came upon a deserted field hospital. It was a ghastly
place. The courier whistled reflectively, while the imaginative Steve
felt a sudden sinking at the pit of the stomach, together with a cold
dizziness and perspiration on the backs of his hands. The mind of the
courier, striking out vigorously for some kind of a stimulant, laid hold
of anger as the nearest efficient. "Bedad," he cried, "ye desartin',
dhirty hound! it's right here I'll be afther lavin' ye, with the naked
dead and the piles of arms and legs! Let go of my bridle or I'll strike
you with my pistol butt! Ughrrrrr!--Get out of this, Peggy!"

They left, mare and man, in a cloud of pine needles and parched earth.
Steve uttered something like a howl and went too, running without regard
to an in truth not mythical sore foot. He ran after the disappearing
courier, and when presently he reached a vast patch of whitened
raspberry bushes giving on a not wide and very dusty road and halted
panting, it was settled forever that he couldn't go back to the
plundering possibilities or to his