man,
who wore a red flannel shirt with one sleeve missing. As Dan went on he
discovered that he was thinking of the handsome man in the red shirt and
wondering how he had lost his missing sleeve. He pondered the question as
if it were a puzzle, and, finally, yielded it up in doubt.

Beyond the base of the hill they came into the small ravine which had been
turned into a rude field hospital. Here the stretcher was put down, and a
tired-looking surgeon, wiping his hands upon a soiled towel, came and knelt
down beside the wounded man.

"Bring a light--I can't see--bring a light!" he exclaimed irritably, as he
cut away the clothes with gentle fingers.

Dan was passing on, when he heard his name called from behind, and turning
quickly found Governor Ambler anxiously regarding him.

"You're not hurt, my boy?" asked the Governor, and from his tone he might
have parted from the younger man only the day before.

"Hurt? Oh, no, I'm not hurt," replied Dan a little bitterly, "but there's a
whole field of them back there, Colonel."

"Well, I suppose so--I suppose so," returned the other absently. "I'm
looking after my men now, poor fellows. A victory doesn't come cheap, you
know, and thank God, it was a glorious victory."

"A glorious victory," repeated Dan, looking at the surgeons who were
working by the light of tallow candles.

The Governor followed his gaze. "It's your first fight," he said, "and you
haven't learned your lesson as I learned mine in Mexico. The best, or the
worst of it, is that after the first fight it comes easy, my boy, it comes
too easy."

There was hot blood in him also, thought Dan, as he looked at him--and yet
of all the men that he had ever known he would have called the Governor the
most humane.

"I dare say--I'll get used to it, sir," he answered. "Yes, it was a
glorious victory."

He broke away and went off into the twilight over the wide meadow to the
little wayside spring. Across the road there was a field of clover, where a
few campfires twinkled, and he hastened toward it eager to lie down in the
darkness and fall asleep. As his feet sank in the moist earth, he looked
down and saw that the little purple flower was still blooming in the mud.

IV

AFTER THE BATTLE

The field of trampled clover looked as if a windstorm had swept over it,
strewing the contents of a dozen dismantled houses. There were stacks of
arms and piles of cooking utensils, knapsacks, half emptied, lay besi