Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/13

Rh No time then for one comrade to help another. In a few moments more his company had gone, leaving behind many of its brave fellows wounded, dying, dead. In the night Karl had been stripped by rebel prowlers, and left for dead. Only his cap remained; that was so firmly clutched in his right hand, they could not take it from him. Withered, drooping above the tarnished gilt wreath on the band, hung the four-leaved clover; but Karl could not see it. He remembered it, however, and as he struggled in his feverish half delirium to recall the last moments before he fell, he muttered to himself: "The four leaf of clover brought this of luck; bad luck to begin."

The feeble sounds caught the ear of a party of rebels, searching for their wounded. As the dark lantern flashed its slender ray of light upon Karl's figure, and the rebel officer saw the United States badge on the cap, he turned away. But at Karl's voice and the broken English: "Water! For God's love, one water!" he turned back. The blue eyes and the yellow hair had a spell in them for the dark-haired Southerner. There had been a Gretchen once with whom he had roamed many a moonlight night, in Heidelberg. Her eyes and her hair, and the pretty broken English she had learned from him, were like these.

"Pick him up, boys; he 'll count for one, damn him!" were the words under which he hid his sudden sympathy from the angry and resentful