Page:The Story of Aunt Becky's Army-Life .djvu/167

Rh Nothing was ever said about it, however, and Aunt Becky went unharmed.

Deserters were shot on the heights above us, within sounding distance of my tent, and I shall never forget the horror in which I listened to the band playing the death-march, as they passed the curve in the road, and the doomed man went to the open grave which yawned for him. I could not help the silence in which I sat, till the music had died away, and the crash of musketry sounding in the sullen distance assured me that the soul of the one time soldier had gone to eternity—ushered beyond the portals by the hands of those whose companion he had been.

I could not reconcile the deed with my obdurate conscience—although I knew the penalty must be severe as death, to hold many in the ranks, yet so often and often men failed to know the true duty of a soldier, and the act of desertion seemed hardly enough to warrant his death at the hands of comrades.

It seemed a cruel thing to make men, who perhaps had been playmates in youth, the executioners of the stern military decree; but I was a woman,—I did not know of these things, and although they tried my soul to the very depths, I was compelled to let them pass silently.