immediately behind Captain Graffenreid,
now observed a strange sight. His attention drawn by an uncommon
movement made by the captain--a sudden reaching forward of the hands and
their energetic withdrawal, throwing the elbows out, as in pulling an
oar--he saw spring from between the officer's shoulders a bright point
of metal which prolonged itself outward, nearly a half-arm's length--a
blade! It was faintly streaked with crimson, and its point approached so
near to the sergeant's breast, and with so quick a movement, that he
shrank backward in alarm. That moment Captain Graffenreid pitched
heavily forward upon the dead man and died.

A week later the major-general commanding the left corps of the Federal
Army submitted the following official report:

"SIR: I have the honor to report, with regard to the action of the 19th
inst, that owing to the enemy's withdrawal from my front to reinforce
his beaten left, my command was not seriously engaged. My loss was as
follows: Killed, one officer, one man."

GEORGE THURSTON

THREE INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A MAN

George Thurston was a first lieutenant and aide-de-camp on the staff of
Colonel Brough, commanding a Federal brigade. Colonel Brough was only
temporarily in command, as senior colonel, the brigadier-general having
been severely wounded and granted a leave of absence to recover.
Lieutenant Thurston was, I believe, of Colonel Brough's regiment, to
which, with his chief, he would naturally have been relegated had he
lived till our brigade commander's recovery. The aide whose place
Thurston took had been killed in battle; Thurston's advent among us was
the only change in the _personnel_ of our staff consequent upon the
change in commanders. We did not like him; he was unsocial. This,
however, was more observed by others than by me. Whether in camp or on
the march, in barracks, in tents, or _en bivouac_, my duties as
topographical engineer kept me working like a beaver--all day in the
saddle and half the night at my drawing-table, platting my surveys. It
was hazardous work; the nearer to the enemy's lines I could penetrate,
the more valuable were my field notes and the resulting maps. It was a
business in which the lives of men counted as nothing against the chance
of defining a road or sketching a bridge. Whole squadrons of cavalry
escort had sometimes to be sent thundering against a powerful infantry
outpost in order that the brief time between the charge and th