with the smile
of placid valour, and of noble manhood, hovering yet on the silent lips.
These had bloodless hands put upwards, white as wax, and firm as death,
clasped (as on a monument) in prayer for dear ones left behind, or in
high thanksgiving. And of these men there was nothing in their broad
blue eyes to fear. But others were of different sort; simple fellows
unused to pain, accustomed to the bill-hook, perhaps, or rasp of the
knuckles in a quick-set hedge, or making some to-do at breakfast, over a
thumb cut in sharpening a scythe, and expecting their wives to make more
to-do. Yet here lay these poor chaps, dead; dead, after a deal of pain,
with little mind to bear it, and a soul they had never thought of; gone,
their God alone knows whither; but to mercy we may trust. Upon these
things I cannot dwell; and none I trow would ask me: only if a plain man
saw what I saw that morning, he (if God had blessed him with the heart
that is in most of us) must have sickened of all desire to be great
among mankind.

Seeing me riding to the front (where the work of death went on among
the men of true English pluck; which, when moved, no farther moves), the
fugitives called out to me, in half a dozen dialects, to make no utter
fool of myself; for the great guns were come, and the fight was over;
all the rest was slaughter.

'Arl oop wi Moonmo',' shouted one big fellow, a miner of the Mendip
hills, whose weapon was a pickaxe: 'na oose to vaight na moor. Wend thee
hame, yoong mon agin.'

Upon this I stopped my horse, desiring not to be shot for nothing; and
eager to aid some poor sick people, who tried to lift their arms to
me. And this I did to the best of my power, though void of skill in
the business; and more inclined to weep with them than to check their
weeping. While I was giving a drop of cordial from my flask to one poor
fellow, who sat up, while his life was ebbing, and with slow insistence
urged me, when his broken voice would come, to tell his wife (whose name
I knew not) something about an apple-tree, and a golden guinea stored in
it, to divide among six children--in the midst of this I felt warm lips
laid against my cheek quite softly, and then a little push; and behold
it was a horse leaning over me! I arose in haste, and there stood
Winnie, looking at me with beseeching eyes, enough to melt a heart of
stone. Then seeing my attention fixed she turned her head, and glanced
back sadly toward the place of battle, an