Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/903

Rh ahead, marched out of Sand River and climbed the hill, halting in the road that passed the great white mansion. As the outposts moved forward they encountered a small boy on a pony, who swung his cap at them gayly as he rode. Squads, dismounted, engaged in tearing away the rail fences bordering the highway, looked around, shouting a cheery answer to his excited greeting; the colonel on a ridge to the east lowered his field-glasses to watch him; the bandmaster saw him coming and smiled as the boy drew bridle beside him, saluting.

"If you're not going to fight, why are you here?" asked the boy, breathlessly.

"It really looks," said the bandmaster, "as though we might fight, after all."

"You too?"

"Perhaps."

"Then—could you come into the house—just a moment? My sister asked me to find you."

A bright blush crept over the bandmaster's sun-tanned cheeks.

"With pleasure," he said, dismounting, and leading his horse through the gateway and across the shrubbery to the trees.

"Celia! Celia!" called the boy, running up the veranda steps. "He is here! Please hurry, because he's going to have a battle!"

She came, slowly, pale and lovely in her black gown, and held out her hand.

"There is a battle going on all around us, isn't there?" she asked. "That is what all this dreadful uproar means?"

"Yes," he said; "there is trouble on the other side of those hills."

"Do you think there will be fighting here?"

"I don't know," he said.

She motioned him to a veranda chair, then seated herself. "What shall we do?" she asked, calmly. "I am not alarmed—but my grandfather is bedridden, and my brother is a child. Is it safe to stay?"

The bandmaster looked at her helplessly.

"I don't know," he repeated,—"I don't know what to say. Nobody seems to understand what is happening; we in the regiment are never told anything; we know nothing except what passes under our eyes." He broke off suddenly; the situation, her loneliness, the impending danger, appalled him.

"May I ask a little favor?" she said, rising. "Would you mind coming in a moment to see my grandfather?"

He stood up obediently, sheathed sabre in his left hand; she led the way across the hall and up the stairs, opened the door, and motioned toward the bed. At first he saw nothing save the pillows and snowy spread.

"Will you speak to him?" she whispered.

He approached the bed, cap in hand.

"He is very old," she said; "he was a soldier of Washington. He desires to see a soldier of the Union."

And now the bandmaster perceived the occupant of the bed, a palsied, bloodless phantom of the past,—an inert, bed-ridden, bony thing that looked dead until its deep eyes opened and fixed themselves on him.

"This is a, Union soldier, grandfather," she said, kneeling on the floor beside him. And to the bandmaster she said in a low voice: "Would you mind taking his hand? He cannot move."

The bandmaster bent stiffly above the bed and took the old man's hand in his. The sunlit room trembled in the cannonade.

"That is all," said the girl, simply. She took the fleshless hand, kissed it, and laid it on the bedspread. "A soldier of Washington," she said, dreamily. "I am glad he has seen you;—I think he understands: but he is very, very old."

She lingered a moment to touch the white hair with her hand; the bandmaster stepped back to let her pass, then put on his cap, hooked his sabre, turned squarely toward the bed and saluted.

The phantom watched him as a dying eagle watches; then the slim hand of the granddaughter fell on the bandmaster's arm, and he turned and clanked out into the open air.

The boy stood waiting for them, and as they appeared, he caught their hands in each of his, talking all the while and walking with them to the gateway, where pony and charger stood, nose to nose under the trees.

"If you need anybody to dash about carrying despatches," the boy ran on, "why, I'll do it for you. My father was a soldier, and I'm going to be one, and I—"