Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/201

 though she were ten times my years, without a show of defence.

I arose as Clem hastily fled from the room.

"Miss Caroline—"I waited for the fine little brows to go up at that. I had not long to wait.

"I shall positively never call you anything else but Miss Caroline while you permit me to address you at all—understand it—I've associated with your boy too long. Well, I did do four years of fighting, and I was mustered out with the rank of Major. You might as well know it now as later. You'll have longer to forget it. I wish I could forget it myself. Not the fact, for I should fight again as long and try to fight harder in the same cause, but the hellishness of it—the damnable, inhuman obscenity of it—I should like to forget. I never said so before, Miss Caroline,—there was no one to say it to,—but it made me old before my time. Why, I could almost be a son of yours, if you will pardon that minor brutality, and the thing is aging me to this day. I helped to kill your young men and your old men, but you ought to know that I didn't do it for holiday sport. The first one of your men I saw dead lay alone by the roadside, a boy, foolishly young, with a tired face that was still smiling. He'd fallen there as if sleep had overtaken him on the march. Our column had halted, and I went to him. It must have taken a full minute for me to realize that this was dignified war and not the murder of a boy in a homely gray uniform. When I did realize it, I was