Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/103

 a close look-out on his movements had been kept So the ship was saved, and the only loss sustained was that of the right arm of the officer."

"And his name was?"

"Stuart Ruysdale, at your service," replied the General, with a salute.

The two men, maimed by the same catastrophe all those years ago, stood looking into each other's faces gravely. To them the river pageant was a shadow; the reality was in the scene they had been living over, in the empty sleeve and worn face of the Northener and the maimed hand and broken fortunes of the Southron.

"It was a terrible mistake," said Lagrange, breaking the painful silence.

"Ay, it was a grievous error. It is those statesmen who involved the whole nation in that bloody brawl, to satisfy their own selfish ambitions, that I hold guilty for all we suffered," returned the General.

"And if you hold them so, what must we, who were broken and beggared by their accursed ambition, think of them?" the Colonel murmured under his breath.

"I have thought from what I have seen since I have been in the South that the heart of the people could not have been in the scheme of the rebellion. How is this?"