"I'm afraid they wouldn't have missed you, Julius, if you'd been killed."
"Na, sah, but I'd a sho missed myself an' dat's de pint wid me."
The President fixed him with a comical frown:
"It's sweet and honorable to die for one's country, Julius!"
"Yassah—dat's what I hear—but I ain't fond er sweet things—I ain't nebber hab no taste fer 'em, sah!"
"Well, it looks like I'll have to let 'em have you, Julius, for an example. I've tried to save you—but there doesn't seem to be any thing to take hold of. Every time I grab you, you slip right through my fingers. I reckon they'll have to shoot you——"
The negro broke into a hearty laugh:
"G'way fum here, Mr. President! You can't fool me, sah. I sees yer laughin' right now way back dar in yo' eyes. You ain't gwine let 'em shoot me. I'se too vallable a nigger fer dat. I wuz worth er thousan' dollars 'fore de war. I sho' oughter be wuth two thousan' now. What's de use er 'stroyin' er good piece er property lak dat? I won't be no good ter nobody ef dey shoots me!"
The President broke down at last, leaned back in his chair and laughed with every muscle of his long body. Julius joined him with unction.
When the laughter died away the tall figure bent over his desk and wrote an order for the negro's release, and discharge from the army.
One of the things which had brought the President his deepest joy in the victory of Vicksburg was not the importance of the capture of the city and the opening of the Mississippi so much as the saving of U. S. Grant as a commanding General.
From the capture of Fort Donelson, the eyes of the Chief Magistrate had been fixed on this quiet fighter. And then came the disaster to his army at Shiloh—the first day's fight a bloody and overwhelming defeat—the second the recovery of the ground lost and the death of Albert Sydney Johnston, his brilliant Confederate opponent.
As a matter of fact, in its results, the battle had been a crushing disaster to the South. But Grant had lost fourteen thousand men in the two days' carnage and it was the first great field of death the war had produced. McClellan had not yet met Lee before Richmond. The cry against Grant was furious and practically universal.
Senator Winter, representing the demands of Congress, literally stormed the White House for weeks with the persistent and fierce demand for Grant's removal.
The President shook his head doggedly:
"I can't spare this man—he fights!"
The Senator submitted the proofs that Grant was addicted to the use of strong drink and that he was under the influence of whiskey on the first day of the battle of Shiloh.
In vain Winter stormed and threatened for an hour. The President was adamant.
He didn't know Grant personally. But he had felt the grip of his big personality on the men under his command and he refused to let him go.
He turned to his tormentor at last with a quizzical look in his eye:
"You know, Winter, that reminds me of a little story——"
The Senator threw up both hands with a gesture of rage. He knew what the wily diplomat was up to.
"I won't hear it, sir," he growled. "I won't hear it. You and your stories are sending this country to hell—it's not more than a mile from there now!"
The sombre eyes smiled as he slowly said:
"I believe itisjust a mile from here to the Senate Chamber!"
The Senator faced him a moment and the two men looked at each other tense, erect, unyielding.
"There may or may not be a grain of truth in your statements, Winter," the quiet voice continued, "but your personal animus against Grant is deeper. He is a Democrat married to a Southern woman, and is a slave-holder. You can't be fair to him. I can, I must and I will. I am the President of all the people. The Nation needs this man. I will not allow him to be crushed. You have my last word."
The Senator strode to the door in silence and paused:
"But you haven't mine, sir!"
The tall figure bowed and smiled.
The President found the task a greater one than he had dreamed. So furious was the popular outcry against Grant, so dogged and persistent was the demand for his removal he was compelled to place General Halleck in nominal command of the district in which his army was operating until the popular furor should subside. In this way he had kept Grant as Second in Command at the head of his army, and Vicksburg with thirty-five thousand prisoners was the answer the silent man in the West had sent to his champion and protector in the White House.
The thrilling message had come at an opportune moment. The new commander of the army of the Potomac had defeated General Lee at Gettysburg and for an hour his name was on every lip. The President and the Nation had taken it for granted that he would hurl his eighty-two thousand men on Lee's army hemmed in by the impassable Potomac.
So sure of this was Stanton that he declared to the President:
"If a single regiment of Lee's army ever gets back into Virginia in an organized condition it will prove that I am totally unfit to be Secretary of War."
Once more the impossible happened. Lee did get back into Virginia, his army marching with quick step and undaunted spirit, ready to fight at any moment his rear guard came in touch with Meade's advancing hosts. He not only crossed the Potomac with his army in perfect fighting form with every gun he carried, but with thousands of fat cattle and four thousand prisoners of war captured on the field of Gettysburg.
The President's day of rejoicing was brief. As Lee withdrew to his old battle ground with his still unconquered lines of grey, the man in the White House saw with aching heart his dream of peace fade into the mists of even a darker night than the one through which his soul had just passed.
Slowly but surely the desperate South began to recover from the shock of Gettysburg and Vicksburg and filled once more her thinning battle lines. General Lee, sorely dissatisfied with himself for his failure to win in Pennsylvania, tendered his resignation to the Richmond Government, asking to be relieved by a younger and abler man. As no such man lived, Jefferson Davis declined his resignation, and he continued his leadership with renewed faith in his genius by every man, woman and child in the South.
General Meade, stung to desperation by the bitter disappointment of the President and the people of the North, also tendered his resignation.
For the moment the President refused to consider it, though his eyes were fixed with growing faith on the silent figure of Grant. One more victory from this stolid fighter and he had found the great commander for which he had sought in vain through blood and tears for more than two years.
The first task to which he must turn his immediate attention was the filling of the depleted ranks of the Northern armies. Volunteering had ceased, the terms of the enlisted men would soon expire, and it was absolutely necessary to enforce a draft for five hundred thousand soldiers.
The President had been warned by the Democratic Party, at present a powerful and aggressive minority in Congress, that such an act of despotism would not be tolerated by a free people.
The President's answer was simple and to the point:
"The South has long since adopted force to fill her ranks. If we are to continue this war and save the Union it is absolutely necessary, and therefore it shall be done."
The great city of New York was the danger point. The Government had been warned of the possibility of a revolution in the metropolis, whose representatives in Congress had demanded the right to secede in the beginning of the war. And yet the warning had not been taken seriously by the War Department. No effort had been made to garrison the city against the possibility of an armed uprising to resist the draft. Demagogues had been haranguing the people for months, inflaming their minds to the point of madness on the subject of this draft.
On the night before the drawing was ordered in New York the leading speaker had swept the crowd off their feet by the daring words with which he closed his appeal:
"We will resist this attempt of Black Republicans and Abolitionists to force the children of the poor into the ranks they dare not enter. Will you give any more of your sons to be food for vultures on the hills of Virginia? Will you allow them to be torn from your firesides and driven as dumb cattle into the mouths of Southern cannon? If you are slaves, yes,——if you are freemen, no!"
When the lottery wheel began to turn off its fatal names at the Government Draft Office at the corner of Forty-sixth Street and Third Avenue on the morning of July 14th, a sullen, determined mob packed the streets in front of the building. Among them stood hundreds of women whose husbands, sons and brothers were listed on the spinning wheel of black fortune.
Their voices were higher and angrier than the men's:
"This is a rich man's war—but a poor man's fight——"
"Yes, if you've got three hundred dollars you can hire a substitute from the slums——"
"But if you happen to be a working man, you can stand up and be shot for these cowards and sneaks!"
"Down with the draft!"
"To hell with the hirelings and their wheel!"
"Smash it——"
"Burn the building!"
A tough from the East Side waved his hand to the crowd of frenzied men and women:
"Come on, boys,——"
With a single mighty impulse the mob surged toward the doors, and through them. A sound of smashing glass, blows, curses. A man rushed into the street holding the enrollment books above his head:
"Here are your names, men—the list of white slaves!"
The mob tore the sheets from his grasp and fell on them like hungry wolves. In ten minutes the books were only scraps of paper trampled into the filth of Third Avenue. Wherever a piece could be seen men and women stamped and spit on it.
They smashed the wheel and furniture into kindling wood, piled it in the middle of the room and set fire to it. No policemen or firemen were allowed to approach. Every officer of the law, both civil and military, had been chased and beaten and disappeared.
Half the block was in flames before the firemen could break through and reach the burning buildings.
Down the Avenue, the maddened mob swept with resistless impulse, jelling, cursing, shouting its defiance.
"Down with the Abolitionists!"
"Hang Horace Greeley on a sour apple tree!"
"To theTribuneOffice!"
Howard, a reporter of theTribune, was recognized:
"Kill him!"
"Hang him!"
The mob seized the reporter, dragged him to a lamp post and were about to put the rope around his neck when a blow from a cobblestone felled him to the sidewalk, the blood trickling down his neck.
A man bending over his body, shouted to the crowd:
"He's dead—we'll take the body away!"
A friend helped and they carried him into a store and saved his life.
For three days and nights this mob burned and killed at will and fought every officer of the law until the streets ran red with blood. They burned the Negro Orphan Asylum, beat, killed or hanged every negro who showed his face, sacked the home of Mayor Opdyke, at 79 Fifth Avenue, and attempted to burn it. They smashed in theTribunebuilding, gutted part of it and would have reduced it to ashes but for the brave defense put up by some of its men.
On the third day the announcement was made that the draft was suspended. Five thousand troops reached the city and partly succeeded in restoring order.
More than a thousand men had been killed and three thousand wounded—among them many women.
The Democratic papers now boldly demanded that the draft should be officially suspended until its constitutionality could be tested by the courts. The State and Municipal authorities of New York appealed to the President to suspend the draft.
He answered:
"If I suspend the draft there can be no army to continue the war and the days of the Republic are numbered. The life of the Nation is at stake."
They begged for time, and he hesitated for a day. The victories of Gettysburg and Vicksburg were forgotten in the grim shadow of a possible repetition of the French Revolution on a vast scale throughout the North. The mob had already sacked the office of theTimesin Troy, broken out in Boston, and threatened Cincinnati.
The President gave the Governor of New York his final answer by sending an army of ten thousand veterans into the city. He planted his artillery to sweep the streets with grape and cannister, and ordered the draft to be immediately enforced.
The new wheel was set up, and turned with bayonets. The mobs were overawed and the ranks of the army were refilled.
Betty Winter found to her sorrow that the memory of a dead love could be a troublesome thing. Ned Vaughan's tender and compelling passion had been resistless in the moonlight beneath a fragrant apple tree with the old mill wheel splashing its music at their feet. She had returned to her cot in the hospital that night in a glow of quiet, peaceful joy. Life's problem had been solved at last in the sweet peace of a tender and beautiful spiritual love—the only love that could be real.
All this was plain, while the glow of Ned's words were in her heart and the memory of his nearness alive in the fingers and lips he had kissed. And then to her terror came stealing back the torturing vision of his brother. Why, why, why could she never shut out the memory of this man!
Over and over again she repeated the angry final word:
"He isn't worth a moment's thought!"
And yet she kept on thinking, thinking, always in the same blind circle. At last came the new resolution,
"Worthy or unworthy, I've given my word to a better man and that settles it."
The fight had become in her inflamed imagination the struggle between good and evil. The younger man with his chivalrous boyish ideals was God, Love, Light. The older with his iron will, his fierce ungovernable passion, was the Devil, Lust and Darkness. She trembled with new terror at the discovery that there was something elemental deep within her own life that answered the challenge of this older voice with a strange joyous daring.
She had just risen from her knees where she had prayed for strength to fight and win this battle when the maid knocked on her door. She had left the hospital and returned home for a week's rest, tottering on the verge of a nervous collapse since her return from the meeting with Ned.
"A letter, Miss Betty," the maid said with a smile.
She tore the envelope with nervous dread. It bore no postmark and was addressed in a strange hand.
Inside was another envelope in Ned's handwriting, and around it a sheet of paper on which was scrawled,
"Dear Miss Winter: The bearer of this letter is a trusted spy of both Governments. I have friends in Washington and in Richmond. In Richmond I am supposed to betray the Washington Government. In Washington it is known that I am at heart loyal to the Union, and all my correspondence from Richmond to the Confederate agents in Canada and the North I deliver to the President and Stanton. This one is an exception. I happened to have met Mr. Ned. Vaughan and like him. I deliver this letter to you unopened by any hand. I've a sweetheart myself."
"Dear Miss Winter: The bearer of this letter is a trusted spy of both Governments. I have friends in Washington and in Richmond. In Richmond I am supposed to betray the Washington Government. In Washington it is known that I am at heart loyal to the Union, and all my correspondence from Richmond to the Confederate agents in Canada and the North I deliver to the President and Stanton. This one is an exception. I happened to have met Mr. Ned. Vaughan and like him. I deliver this letter to you unopened by any hand. I've a sweetheart myself."
With a cry of joy, Betty broke the seal and read Ned's message. It was written just after the battle of Gettysburg.
"Dearest: I am writing to you to-night because I must—though this may never reach you. The whole look of war has changed for me since that wonderful hour we spent in the moonlight beside the river and you promised me your life. It's all a pitiful tragedy now, and love, love, love seems the only thing in all God's universe worth while! I don't wish to kill any more. It hurts the big something inside that's divine. I'm surprised at myself that I can't see the issues of National life as I saw them at first. Somehow they have become dwarfed beside the new wonder and glory that fills my heart. And now like a poor traitor, I am praying for peace, peace at any price. Oh, dearest, you have brought me to this. I love you so utterly with every breath I breathe, every thought of mind and every impulse of soul and body, how can I see aught else in the world?"In every scene of these three days of horror through which we've just passed, my thought was of you. The signal gun that called the men to die boomed your name for me. I heard it in the din and roar and crash of armies. The louder came the call of death, the sweeter life seemed because life meant you. Life has taken on a new and wonderful meaning. I love it as I never loved it before and I've grown to hate death and I whisper it to you, my love, my own—to hate war! I want to live now, and I'm praying, praying, praying for peace. My mind is yet clear in its conviction of right or I could not stay here a moment longer. But I'm longing and hoping and wondering whether God will not show us the way out of your tragic dilemma."During the battle I found a handsome young Federal officer who had fallen inside out lines. With his last strength he was trying to write a message to his bride who was waiting for him behind the Union lines. I couldn't pass by. I stopped and got his name, gave him water and made him as comfortable as possible. I got permission from my General while the battle raged and sent his message with a flag of truce to his wife. She came flying to his side at the risk of her life, got to the rear and saved him. Perhaps I wasn't an ideal soldier in that pause in my fight. But I had to do it, dearest. It was your sweet spirit that stopped me and sent the white flag of love and mercy."And the strangest of all the things of the war happened that night. I spent six hours among the wounded, helping the poor boys all I could—both blue and grey—and I suddenly ran into John at the same pitiful work. It's curious how all the bitterness is gone out of my heart."I grabbed him and hugged him, and we both cried like two fools. We sat down between the lines in the brilliant moonlight and talked for an hour. I told him of you, dearest, and he wished me all the happiness life could give, but with a queer hitch in his voice, and after a long silence, which made me wonder if he, too, had not been loving you in secret. I shouldn't wonder if every man who sees you loves you. The wonder to me is they don't."Our band is playing an old-fashioned Southern song that sets my heart to beating with joyous madness again. I'm dreaming through that song of the home I'm going to build for you somewhere in the land of sunshine. Don't worry about me. I'm not going to die. I know I'm immortal now. I had faith once. Now I know—because I love you and time is too short to tell and all too short to live my love.
"Dearest: I am writing to you to-night because I must—though this may never reach you. The whole look of war has changed for me since that wonderful hour we spent in the moonlight beside the river and you promised me your life. It's all a pitiful tragedy now, and love, love, love seems the only thing in all God's universe worth while! I don't wish to kill any more. It hurts the big something inside that's divine. I'm surprised at myself that I can't see the issues of National life as I saw them at first. Somehow they have become dwarfed beside the new wonder and glory that fills my heart. And now like a poor traitor, I am praying for peace, peace at any price. Oh, dearest, you have brought me to this. I love you so utterly with every breath I breathe, every thought of mind and every impulse of soul and body, how can I see aught else in the world?
"In every scene of these three days of horror through which we've just passed, my thought was of you. The signal gun that called the men to die boomed your name for me. I heard it in the din and roar and crash of armies. The louder came the call of death, the sweeter life seemed because life meant you. Life has taken on a new and wonderful meaning. I love it as I never loved it before and I've grown to hate death and I whisper it to you, my love, my own—to hate war! I want to live now, and I'm praying, praying, praying for peace. My mind is yet clear in its conviction of right or I could not stay here a moment longer. But I'm longing and hoping and wondering whether God will not show us the way out of your tragic dilemma.
"During the battle I found a handsome young Federal officer who had fallen inside out lines. With his last strength he was trying to write a message to his bride who was waiting for him behind the Union lines. I couldn't pass by. I stopped and got his name, gave him water and made him as comfortable as possible. I got permission from my General while the battle raged and sent his message with a flag of truce to his wife. She came flying to his side at the risk of her life, got to the rear and saved him. Perhaps I wasn't an ideal soldier in that pause in my fight. But I had to do it, dearest. It was your sweet spirit that stopped me and sent the white flag of love and mercy.
"And the strangest of all the things of the war happened that night. I spent six hours among the wounded, helping the poor boys all I could—both blue and grey—and I suddenly ran into John at the same pitiful work. It's curious how all the bitterness is gone out of my heart.
"I grabbed him and hugged him, and we both cried like two fools. We sat down between the lines in the brilliant moonlight and talked for an hour. I told him of you, dearest, and he wished me all the happiness life could give, but with a queer hitch in his voice, and after a long silence, which made me wonder if he, too, had not been loving you in secret. I shouldn't wonder if every man who sees you loves you. The wonder to me is they don't.
"Our band is playing an old-fashioned Southern song that sets my heart to beating with joyous madness again. I'm dreaming through that song of the home I'm going to build for you somewhere in the land of sunshine. Don't worry about me. I'm not going to die. I know I'm immortal now. I had faith once. Now I know—because I love you and time is too short to tell and all too short to live my love.
"Ned."
She read it over twice through eyes that grew dim with each foolish, sweet extravagance. And then she went back and read for the third time the line about John, threw herself across her bed and burst into tears.
The draft of half a million men was scarcely completed when Rosecrans' Western army, advancing into Georgia, met with crushing defeat at Chickamauga, "The River of Death." His shattered hosts were driven back into Chattanooga with the loss of eighteen thousand men in a rout so complete and stunning that Charles A. Dana, the Assistant Secretary of War, telegraphed the President from the front that it was another "Bull Run."
Rosecrans himself wired that he had met with a terrible disaster. The White House sent him words of cheer. The Confederate Commander, General Bragg, rapidly closed in and began to lay siege to Chattanooga, and the defeated Federal army were put on short rations.
The President turned his eyes now from Meade and his army of the Potomac which Lee's strategy had completely baffled and gave his first thought to the armies of the West. He sent Sherman hurrying from the Mississippi to Rosecrans' relief and Hooker from the East. In the place of Rosecrans he promoted George H. Thomas, whose gallant stand had saved the army from annihilation and won the title, "The Rock of Chickamauga." And most important of all he placed in supreme command of the forces in Tennessee the silent man whom his patience and faith had saved to the Nation, the conqueror of Vicksburg—Ulysses S. Grant.
On November the 24th and 25th, the new Commander raised the siege of Chattanooga, and drove Bragg's army from Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain back into Georgia.
At last the President had found the man of genius for whom he had long searched. Grant was summoned to Washington and given command of all the armies of the United States East and West.
The new General at once placed William Tecumseh Sherman at the head of an army of a hundred thousand men at Chattanooga for the purpose of reinvading Georgia, sent General Butler with forty thousand up the Peninsula against Richmond along the line of McClellan's old march, raised the Army of the Potomac to one hundred and forty thousand effective fighters, took command in person and faced General Lee on the banks of the Rapidan but a few miles from the old ground in the Wilderness around Chancellorsville where Hooker's men had baptized the earth in heroic blood the year before.
Grant's army was the flower of Northern manhood and with its three hundred and eighteen great field guns the best equipped body of fighting men ever brought together on our continent. His baggage train was over sixty miles long and would have stretched the entire distance to Richmond.
By the spring of 1864 when he reached the Rapidan Lee's army had been recruited again to its normal strength of sixty-two thousand.
A great religious revival swept the Southern camps during the winter and its meetings lasted into the spring almost to the hour of the opening guns of the Wilderness campaign. Had whispers from the Infinite reached the souls of the ragged men in grey and told them of coming Gethsemane and Calvary?
Certain it is that though Lee's army were ragged and poorly fed their courage was never higher, their faith in their Commander never more sublime than in those beautiful spring mornings in April when they burnished their bayonets to receive Grant's overwhelming host.
The Chaplain of Ned Vaughan's regiment was leading a prayer meeting in the moonlight. An earnest brother was praying fervently for more manhood, and more courage.
A ragged Confederate kneeling nearby didn't like the drift of his petition and his patience gave out. He raised his head and called.
"Say, hold on there, brother! You're getting that prayer all wrong. We don't need no more courage—got so much now we're skeered of ourselves sometimes. What we need is provisions. Ask the Lord to send us something to eat. That's what we want now——"
The leader took the interruption in good spirit and added an eloquent request for at least one good meal a day if the Lord in his goodness and mercy could spare it.
No persimmon tree was ever stripped without the repetition of their old joke. They all knew the words by heart,
"Don't eat those persimmons—they're not good for you!"
"I know it, man, I'm just doin' it to pucker my stomach to fit my rations!"
Ned was passing the door of a cabin in which a prayer meeting of officers was being held. He was walking with his Colonel who was fond of a sip of corn whiskey at times. He was slightly deaf.
The leader of the meeting called from the door:
"Won't you join us in prayer, Colonel?"
"Thank you, no, I've just had a little!" he answered innocently.
Ned roared and the brethren inside the cabin joined the laugh.
No body of men of any race ever marched to death with calmer faith than those ragged lines of grey now girding their loins for the fiercest, bloodiest struggle in the annals of the world.
Lee allowed Grant to cross the Rapidan unopposed and penetrate the tangled wilds of the Wilderness. The Southerner knew that in these dense woods the effectiveness of his opponent's superior numbers would be vastly reduced. Longstreet's corps had not yet arrived from Gordonsville where he had been sent to obtain food, and he must concentrate his forces.
The days were oppressively hot, as the men in blue tramped through the forest aisles of the vast Virginia jungle—a maze of trees, underbrush and dense foliage. A pall of ominous silence hung over this labyrinth of desolation, broken only by the chirp of bluebird or the distant call of the yellowhammer.
Not waiting for the arrival of Longstreet on his forced march from Gordonsville, Lee suddenly threw the half of his army on Grant's advancing men with savage energy. Their march was halted and through every hour of the day and far into the night the fierce conflict raged. As darkness fell the Confederates had pushed the blue lines back, captured four guns and a number of prisoners.
But Longstreet had not come and Lee's army of barely forty thousand men were in a dangerous position before Grant's legions.
Both Generals renewed the fight at daylight. The Federals attacked Lee's entire line with terrific force. Just as the Confederate right wing was being crushed and rolled back in disorder, Longstreet reached the field and threw his men into the breach. Lee himself rode to the front to lead the charge and reëstablish his yielding lines.
From a thousand throats rose the cry:
"Lee to the rear!"
"Go back, General Lee!"
"This is no place for you!"
"We'll settle this!"
The men refused to move until their Commander had withdrawn. And then with their fierce yell they charged and swept the field.
Lee repeated the brilliant achievement of Jackson at Chancellorsville. Longstreet was sent around Hancock's left to turn and assail his flank. The movement was a complete success. Hancock's line was smashed and driven back a mile to his second defenses.
General Wadsworth at the head of his division was mortally wounded and fell into the hands of the on-sweeping Confederates. Just as the movement had reached the moments of its triumph which would have crumpled Grant's army in confusion back on the banks of the river, Longstreet fell dangerously wounded, struck down by a volley from his own men in exactly the same way and almost in the same spot where Jackson had fallen. General Jenkins, who was with him, was instantly killed.
The charging hosts were halted by the change of Commanders and the movement failed of its big purpose, though at sunset General John B. Gordon broke through Sedgwick's Union lines, rolled back his right flank, drove him a mile from his entrenchments and captured six hundred prisoners with two brigadier generals.
The mysterious fate which had pursued the South had once more stricken down a great commander in the moment of victory, and snatched it from his grasp—at Shiloh, Albert Sydney Johnston; at Seven Pines, Joseph E. Johnston; at Chancellorsville, Jackson, and now Longstreet.
Grant in two days lost seventeen thousand six hundred and sixty-six men, a larger number than fell under Hooker when he had retreated in despair. Any other General than Grant, the stolid bulldog fighter, would have retreated across the Rapidan to reorganize his bleeding lines.
As one of his Generals rode up the following morning out of the confusion and horror of the night, Grant, chewing on his cigar, waved his right arm with a quick movement:
"It's all right, Wilson; we'll fight again!"
Next day the two armies lay in their trenches facing each other in grim silence. Grant determined again to turn Lee's right flank and get between him and Richmond.
Lee divined his purpose before a single regiment had begun to march. Spottsylvania Court House lay on his right. The Confederate Commander hurried his advance guard to the spot and lay in wait for his opponent.
The day of the 19th was spent by both armies in adjusting lines and constructing breastworks. These fortifications were made by digging huge ditches and on the top of their banks fastening heavy logs. In front of these, abatis were made by filling the trees and cutting their limbs in such a way that the sharp spikes projected toward the breasts of the advancing foe.
While placing his guns in position General Sedgwick was killed by a sharpshooter's bullet—a commander of high character and fearless courage and loved by every man in his army.
On the morning of the 10th Hancock attempted to turn Lee's rear by crossing the Po. The movement failed and he was recalled with heavy losses under Early's assault as he recrossed the river.
Warren led his division in a determined charge on the Confederate front and they were mowed down in hundreds by Longstreet's men behind their entrenchments. They reached the abatis and one man leaped on the breastworks before they fell back in bloody confusion. General Rice was mortally wounded in this charge.
On the left of Warren, Colonel Emory Upton charged and broke through the Confederate lines capturing twelve hundred prisoners, but was driven back at last with the loss of a thousand of his men. Grant made him a Brigadier General on the field.
The first day at Spottsylvania ended with a loss of four thousand Union men. Lee's losses were less than half that number.
The 11th they paused for breath, and Grant sent his famous dispatch to Washington:
"I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer."
On the morning of the 12th Hancock was ordered to charge at daylight. Lee's lines were spread out in the shape of an enormous letter V. Hancock's task was to capture the angle which formed the key to this position.
In pitch darkness under pouring rain his four divisions under Birney, Mott, Barlow and Gibbon slipped through the mud and crept into position within a few hundred yards of the Confederate breastworks.
As the first streaks of dawn pierced the murky clouds, without a shot, the solid, silent lines of blue rushed this angle and leaped into the entrenchments before the astounded men in grey knew what had happened.
So swift was the blow, so surprising, so overwhelming in numbers, the angle was captured practically without a struggle and the three thousand men within it were forced to surrender with every cannon, their muskets, colors and two Generals. It was the most brilliant single achievement of "Hancock the Superb."
Pressing on, Hancock's men advanced against the second series of trenches a half mile beyond. Here the fight really began.
Into their faces poured a terrific volley of musketry and General John B. Gordon led his men in a desperate charge to drive the invaders back.
Lee, seeing the dangerous situation, rode to the front with the evident intention of joining in this charge.
Again the cry rang from the hearts of the men who loved him:
"Lee to the rear!"
They refused to move until he was led out of range of the fire. Gordon's men charged and drove the Federal hosts back until at last they stood against the entrenchments they had captured. Reinforcements now poured in from both sides and the fighting became indescribable in its mad desperation. Thousands of men in blue and men in grey fought face to face and hand to hand. Muskets blazed in one another's eyes and blew heads off. The dead were piled in rows four and five deep, blue and grey locked in each other's arms. The trenches were filled with the dead and cleared of bodies again and again to make room for the living until they in turn were thrown out.
Ned Vaughan saw a grey color-bearer's arm shot away at the shoulder, the quivering flesh smeared with mud, stained with powder and filled with the shreds of his grey sleeve—and yet, without blenching, he grasped his colors with the other hand and swept on into the jaws of this flaming hell at the head of his men. The rain of musketry fire against the trees came to Ned's ears in low undertone like the rattle of myriads of hail stones on the roof of a house.
A grey soldier was fighting a duel to the death with a magnificently dressed officer in blue, bare bayonet against bare sword. The soldier, with a sudden plunge, ran his opponent through. With a shudder, Ned looked to see if it were John.
A company of men in blue were caught and cut off by a grey wave and were trying to surrender. Their officers with drawn revolvers refused to let them.
"Shoot your officers!" a grey man shouted. In a moment every Commander dropped and the men were marched to the rear.
Hour after hour the flames of hell swirled in an endless whirlwind around this "Bloody Angle." Battle line after battle line rushed in never to return. Ned saw an oak tree two feet in diameter gnawed down by musket balls. It fell with a crash, killing and wounding a number of men.
Color-bearers waved their flags in each other's faces, clinched and fought like demons. Two soldiers, their ammunition spent, choked each other to death on top of the entrenchment and rolled down its banks among the torn and mangled bodies that filled the ditch.
In the edge of this red whirlwind Ned Vaughan saw a grim man in grey standing beside a tree using two guns. His wounded comrade loaded one while he took deliberate aim and fired the other. With each crack of his musket a man in blue was falling.
In the centre of this mass of struggling maniacs the men were fighting with gun swabs, handspikes, clubbed muskets, stones and fists.
The night brought no rest, no pause to succor the wounded or bury the dead. Through the black murk of the darkness they fought on and on until at last the men who were living sank in their tracks at three o'clock before day and neither line had given from this "Bloody Angle."
The rain ceased to fall, the clouds lifted and the waning moon came out.
Ned Vaughan passing over the outer field saw a long line of men lying in regular ranks in an odd position. He turned to the Commander.
"Why don't you move that line of battle now to make it conform to your own?"
"They're all dead men," was the quiet answer. "They are Georgia soldiers."
John Vaughan, on the other side, crossing an open space, came on a blue battle line asleep rank on rank, skirmishers in front and battle line behind, all asleep on their arms. There was no one near to answer a question. They were all dead.
The blue and grey men were talking to one another now.
"Well, Johnnie," a Yankee called through the shadows, "I can't admit that you're inspired of God, but after to-day I must say that you are possessed of the devil."
"Same to you, Yank! Your papers say we're all demoralized anyhow—so to-morrow you oughtn't have no trouble finishin' us!"
"Ah, shut up now, Johnnie, and go to sleep!"
"All right, good-night, Yank, hope ye'll rest well. We'll give ye hell at daylight!"
For five days Grant swung his blue lines in circles of blood trying in vain to break Lee's ranks and gave it up. He had lost at Spottsylvania eighteen thousand more men. The stolid, silent man of iron nerves was terribly moved by the frightful losses his gallant army had sustained. He watched with anguish the endless lines of wagons bearing his stricken men from the field. Lee's forces had been handled with such consummate and terrible skill, his crushing numbers had made little impression.
Grant was facing a new force in the world. The ordinary methods of war which he had used with success in the West went here for nothing. The devotion of Lee's men was a mania. Small as his army was the bulldog fighter saw with amazement that it was practically unconquerable in a square, hand-to-hand struggle.
Once more he was forced to maneuver for advantage in position. He ordered a new flank movement by the North Anna River.
He had opened his fight with Lee on the 5th, and in two weeks he had lost thirty-six thousand men, without gaining an inch in the execution of his original plan of thrusting himself between the Confederate leader and his Capital. Lee's army was apparently as terrible a fighting machine as on the day they had met.
A truce now followed to bury the dead and care for the wounded. So sure had Grant been of crushing his opponent he had refused to agree to this during the struggle.
They found them piled six layers deep in the trenches, blue and grey, blue and grey. Black wings were spread over the top with red beaks tearing at eyes and lips while deep down below, yet groaned and moved the living wounded.
God of Love and Pity, draw the veil over the scene! No pen can tell its story—no heart endure to hear it.
The stop was brief. Already the cavalry were skirmishing for the next position.
Again the keen eye of Lee had divined his enemy's purpose. By a shorter road his men had reached the North Anna before Grant. When the Union leader arrived on the scene he found the position of his advance division dangerous and quickly withdrew with the loss of two thousand men.
Once more he determined to turn Lee's flank and hurled his army toward Cold Harbor. This time he reached his chosen ground before his opponent and on the 31st, Sheridan's cavalry took possession of the place. The two armies had rushed for this point in waving parallel lines, flashing at each other death-dealing volleys as they touched.
Both armies immediately began to entrench in their chosen positions. Lee, familiar with his ground, had chosen his position with consummate skill. On June the 1st, the preliminary attack was made at six o'clock in the afternoon. It was short and bloody. The Northern division under Smith and Wright charged and lost two thousand two hundred men in an hour.
Again Lee had placed his guns and infantry in a fiery crescent on the hills arranged to catch both flanks and front of an advancing army.
Grant's soldiers knew that grim work had been cut out for them on that fatal morning the third day of June. As John Vaughan walked along the lines the night before he saw thousands of silent men busy with their needle and thread sewing their names on their underclothing.
The hot, close weather of the preceding days had ended in a grateful rain at five o'clock, which continued through the night and brought the tired, suffering men gracious relief.
Grant decided to assault the whole Confederate front and gave his orders for the attack at the first streak of dawn at four-thirty.
The charging blue hosts literally walked into the crater of a volcano flaming in their faces and pouring tons of steel and lead into their stricken flanks. Nothing like it had ever before been seen in the history of war.
Ten thousand men in blue fell in twenty minutes!
The battle was practically over at half past seven o'clock.
General Smith received an order from Meade to renew the assault and flatly refused.
The scene which followed has no parallel in the records of human suffering. Its horror is inconceivable and unthinkable. Through the summer nights the shrieks and groans of the wounded and dying rose in pitiful endless waves. And no hand was lifted to save. For three days they lay begging for water, groaning and dying where they had fallen. It was certain death to venture in that storm-swept space. Only a few brave men fought their way through to rescue a fallen comrade.
It was not until the 7th that a truce was arranged to clear this shamble and then every man in blue was dead save two. Everywhere blood, blood, blood in dark slippery pools—dead horses—dead men—smashed guns, legs, arms, torn and mangled pieces of bodies—the earth plowed with shot and shell.
Thirty days had passed since Grant met Lee in the tangled Wilderness and the Northern army had lost sixty thousand men, two thousand a day.
It is small wonder that he decided not to try longer "to fight it out on that line."
Lee had put out of combat as many men for his opponent as he had under his command at any time and his army with the reinforcements he had received was now as strong as the day he met Grant.
For twelve days the two armies lay in their entrenchments on this field of death while the Federal Commander arranged a new plan of campaign. The sharpshooting was incessant. No man in all the line of blue could stand erect and live an instant. Soldiers whose time of service had expired and were ordered home, had to crawl on their hands and knees through the trenches to the rear.
The new Commander, on whose genius the President and the people had planted their brightest hopes, had just reached the spot where McClellan stood in June, 1862. And he might have gotten there by the James under cover of his gunboats without the loss of a single life.
Again John Vaughan's memory turned to McClellan with desperate bitterness. The longer he brooded over the hideous scenes of the past month, the higher rose his blind rage against the President.
When Julius, who had returned to John Vaughan's service, saw those piles of dead men on the field of Cold Harbor he lost faith in the Union Cause. He made up his mind that the past month's work had more than paid for that letter to the President and he took to the woods on his own hook.
He lay down to sleep the night he deserted in a clump of trees near the Confederate outposts and rested his head on a pillow of pine straw. When he waked in the morning at dawn he felt something tickle his nose. He cautiously reached one hand up to see what it was and felt a lock of hair. He rose slowly, fearing to look till he had gained his feet. He turned his eyes at last and saw that he had been sleeping on a dead man's head protruding through the shallow dirt and pine straw that had been hastily thrown over it the first day of the battle.
With a yell of terror he started on a run for his life.
He never stopped until he had flanked Lee's army by a wide swing, made his way to the rear and joined the Confederacy.
Grant had now changed his plan of campaign. He determined to capture Petersburg by acoupand cut the communication of Lee and Richmond with the South. Thecoupfailed. The ragged remnants of Lee's army which had been left there to defend it, held the trenches until reinforcements arrived.
He determined to take it by a resistless concerted assault. On the 16th he threw three of his army corps on Beauregard's thin lines before Petersburg, capturing four redoubts. At daylight, on the 17th, he again hurled his men on Beauregard and drove his men out of his first line of defense. All day the defenders held their second line, though Grant's crack divisions poured out their blood like water. As night fell the dead were once more piled high on the Federal front and the Confederate dead filled the trenches.
As the third day dawned the fierce, assault was renewed, but Lee had brought up Anderson's Corps with Kershaw and Field's division and the blue waves broke against the impregnable grey ranks and rolled back, leaving the dead in dark heaps.
As the shadows of night fell, Grant withdrew his shattered lines to their trenches.
He had lost ten thousand five hundred more men and had failed.
He began to burrow his fortifications into the earth around Petersburg and try by siege what had been found impossible by assault. Further and further crept his blue lines with pick and axe and spade and shovel, digging, burrowing, piling their dirt and timbers. Before each blue rampart silently grew one in grey until the two siege lines stretched for thirty-seven miles in bristling, flaming semicircle covering both Richmond and Petersburg.
Again Grant planned acoup. He chose the role of the fox this time instead of the lion. He selected the key of Lee's long lines of defense and set a regiment of Pennsylvania miners to work digging a tunnel under the Confederate fort known as "Elliot's Salient," which stood but two hundred yards in front of Burnside's corps.
The tunnel was finished, the mine ready, the fuses set, and eight thousand pounds of powder planted in the earth beneath the unsuspecting Confederates.
Hancock's division with Sheridan's cavalry were sent to make a demonstration against Richmond and draw Lee's main army to its defense. The ruse was partly successful. There were but eighteen thousand behind the defenses of Petersburg on the dark night when Grant massed fifty thousand picked men before the doomed fort. The pioneers with their axes cleared the abatis and opened the way for the charging hosts. Heavy guns and mortars were planted to sweep the open space beyond the Salient and beat back any attempted counter charge.
The time set for the explosion was just before dawn. The fuse was lit and fifty thousand men stood gripping their guns, waiting for the shock. A quarter of an hour passed and nothing happened. An ominous silence brooded over the dawning sky. The only sounds heard were the twitter of waking birds in the trees and hedgerows. The fuse had failed. Two heroic men crawled into the tunnel and found it had spluttered out in a damp spot but fifty feet from the powder. It required an hour to secure and plant a new fuse. Day had dawned. Just in front of John Vaughan's regiment a Confederate spy was caught. He could hear every word of the pitiful tragedy.
He was a handsome, brown-eyed youngster of eighteen.
He glanced pathetically toward the doomed fort, and shook his head:
"Fifteen minutes more and I'd have saved you, boys!"
He turned then to the executioners:
"May I have just a minute to pray?"
"Yes."
He knelt and lifted his head, the fine young lips moving in silence as the first rays of the rising sun flooded the scene with splendor.
"May I write just a word to my mother and to my sweetheart?" he asked with a smile. "They're just over there in Petersburg."
"Yes."
They gave him a piece of paper and he wrote his last words of love, and in a moment was swinging from the limb of a tree. Only a few of the more thoughtful men paid any attention. It was nothing. Such things happened every day. God only kept the records.
The new fuse was set and lighted. The minutes seemed hours as the men waited breathlessly. With a dull muffled roar from the centre of the earth beneath their very feet the fort rose two hundred feet straight into the sky, driven by a tower of flame that stood stark and red in the heavens. And then with blinding crash the mighty column of earth, guns, timbers and three hundred grey bodies sank into the yawning crater. The pit was sixty-five feet wide and three hundred feet long.
The explosion had been a complete success. The undermined fort had been wiped from the landscape. A great gap opened in Lee's lines marked by the grave of three hundred of his men.
Burnside's division rushed into the crater and climbed through the breach. His men were met promptly by Ransom's brigade of North Carolinians and held. The Union support became entangled in the hole, stumbled and fell in confusion.
General Mahone's brigades hastily called, rushed into position, and a general Confederate charge was ordered. In silence, their arms trailing by their sides, they quickly crossed the open space and fell like demons on the confused blue lines which were driven back into the crater and slaughtered like sheep. The Confederate guns were trained on this yawning pit whose edges now bristled with flaming muskets. Regiment after regiment of blue were hurled into this hell hole to be torn and cut to pieces.
A division of negro troops were hurried in and the sight of them drove the Southerners to desperation. It took but a moment's grim charge to hurl these black regiments back into the pit on the bodies of their fallen white comrades. The crater became a butcher's shambles.
When the smoke cleared four thousand more of Grant's men lay dead and wounded in the grave in which had been buried three hundred grey defenders.
Lee's losses were less than one third as many. Grant asked for a truce to bury his dead and from five until nine next morning there was no firing along the grim lines of siege for the first time since the day Petersburg had been invested.
So confident now was Lee that he could hold his position against any assault his powerful opponent could make, he detached Jubal Early with twenty thousand men and sent him through the Shenandoah Valley to strike Washington.
Grant was compelled to send Sheridan after him. In the meantime he determined to take advantage of Lee's reduced strength and cut the Weldon railroad over which were coming all supplies from the South.
Warren's corps was sent on this important mission. His attack failed and he was driven back with a loss of three thousand men. He entrenched himself and called for reinforcements. Hancock's famous corps was hurried to the assistance of Warren.
John Vaughan's regiment was now attached to Hancock's army. As they were strapping on their knapsacks for this march, to his amazement Julius suddenly appeared, grinning and bustling about as if he had never strayed from the fold. His clothes were in shreds and tatters.
"Where have you been all this time, nigger?" John asked.
"Who, me?"
"And where'd you get that new suit of clothes?"
"Well, I'm gwine tell ye Gawd's truf, Marse John. Atter dat Cold Harbor business I lit out fur de odder side. I wuz gittin' 'long very well dar wid General Elliot in de Confederacy when all of er sudden somfin' busted an' blowed me clean back inter de Union. An' here I is—yassah. An' I'se gwine ter stick by you now. 'Pears lak de ain't no res' fur de weary no whar."
John was glad to have his enterprising cook once more and received the traitor philosophically.
Lee threw A. P. Hill's corps between Warren and Hancock's advancing division. Hancock entrenched himself along-the railroad which he was destroying.
Hill trained his artillery on these trenches and charged them with swift desperation late in the afternoon. The Union lines were broken and crushed and the men fled in panic. In vain "Hancock the Superb," who had seen his soldiers fall but never fail, tried to rally them. In agony he witnessed their utter rout. His trenches were taken, his guns captured and turned in a storm of death on his fleeing men. He lost twelve stands of colors, nine big guns and twenty-five hundred men.
As the darkness fell General Nelson A. Miles succeeded in rallying a new line and stayed the panic by a desperate countercharge.
Once more the grapple was hand to hand, man to man, in the darkness. John Vaughan had fired the last load, save one, from his revolver, and sword in hand, was cheering his men in a mad effort to regain their lost entrenchments. Blue and grey were mixed in black confusion. Only by the light of flashing guns could friend be distinguished from foe. A musket flamed near his face and through the deep darkness which followed a sword thrust pierced his side. He sprang back with an oath and clinched with his antagonist, feeling for his throat in silence. For a minute they wheeled struggled and fought in desperation, stumbling over underbrush, slipping to their knees and rising. Every instinct of the fighting brute in man was up now and the battle was to the death for one—perhaps both.
John succeeded at last in releasing his right hand and drawing his revolver. His enemy sprang back at the same moment and through the darkness again came the sword into his breast. He felt the blood following the blade as it was snatched away, raised his revolver and fired his last shot squarely at his foe. The muzzle was less than two feet from his face and in the flash he saw Ned's look of horror, both brothers recognizing each other in the same instant.
"John—my God, it's you!"
"Yes—yes—and it's you—God have mercy if I've killed you!"
In a moment the older brother had caught Ned's sinking body and lowered it gently on the leaves.
"It's all right, John, old man," he gasped. "If I had to die it's just as well by your hand. It's war—it's hell—all hell—anyhow—what's the difference——"
"But you mustn't die, Boy!" John whispered fiercely. "You mustn't, I tell you!"
"I didn't want to die," Ned sighed. "Life was—just—becoming—real—beautiful—wonderful——"
He stopped and drew a deep breath.
John bent lower and Ned's arm slipped toward his neck and his fingers touched the warm blood soaking his clothes.
"I'm—afraid—I—got—you,—too,—John——"
"No, I'm all right—brace up, Boy. Pull that devil will of yours together—we've both got it—and live!"
The younger man's head had sunk on his brother's blood-stained breast.
"Now, look here, Ned, old man—this'll never do—don't—don't—give up!"
The answer came faint and low:
"Tell—Betty—when—you—see—her—that—with—my—last—breath—I—spoke—her—name—her—face—lights—the—dark—way——"
"You're going, Ned?"
"Yes——"
"Say you forgive me!"
"There's—nothing—to—forgive—it's—all—right—John—good-bye——"
The voice stopped. The battle had ceased. The woods were still. The older brother could feel the slow rising and falling of the strong young chest as if the muscles in the glory of their perfect life refused to hear the call of Death.
He bent in the darkness and kissed the trembling lips and they, too, were still. He drew himself against the trunk of a tree and through the beautiful summer night held the body of his dead brother in his arms.
His fevered eyes were opened at last and he saw war as it is for the first time. It had meant nothing before this reckoning of the dead and wounded after battle—sixty thousand men from the Rapidan to Cold Harbor in thirty days—ten thousand five hundred in the futile dash against Petersburg—four thousand in the crater—five thousand five hundred more now on this torn, twisted railroad, and all a failure—not an inch of ground gained.
These torn and mangled bundles of red rags he had watched the men dump into trenches and cover with dirt had meant nothing real. They were only loathsome things to be hidden from sight before the bugles called the army to move.
Now he saw a vision. Over every dark bundle on those blood-soaked fields bent a brother, a father, a mother, a sister or sweetheart. He heard their cries of anguish until all other sounds were dumb.
The heaps of amputated legs and arms he had seen so often without a sigh were bathed now in tears. The surgeons with their hands and arms and clothes soaked with red—he saw them with the eyes of love—scene on scene in hideous review—the young officer at Cold Harbor whose leg they were cutting off without the use of chloroform, his face convulsed, his jaws locked as the knife crashed through nerve and sinew, muscle and artery. And those saws gnawing through bones—God in heaven, he could hear them all now—they were cutting and tearing those he loved.
He heard their terrible orders with new ears. For the first time he realized what they meant.
"Give them the bayonet now——"
The low, savage, subdued tones of the officer had once thrilled his soul. The memory sickened him.
He could hear the impassioned speech of the Colonel as the men lay flat on their faces in the grass—the click of bayonets in their places—the look on the faces of the men eager, fierce, intense, as they sprang to their feet at the call:
"Charge!"
And the fight. A big, broad-shouldered brute is trying to bayonet a boy of fifteen. The boy's slim hand grips the steel with an expression of mingled rage and terror. He holds on with grim fury. A comrade rushes to his rescue. His bayonet misses the upper body of the strong man and crashes hard against his hip bone. The man with his strength seizes the gun, snatches it from his bleeding thigh and swings it over his head to brain his new antagonist, when the first boy, with a savage laugh, plunges his bayonet through the strong man's heart and he falls with a dull crash, breaking the steel from the musket's muzzle and lies quivering, with the blood-spouting point protruding from his side. He understood now—these were not soldiers obeying orders—they were fathers and brothers and playmates, killing and maiming and tearing each other to pieces.
Lord God of Love and Mercy, the pity and horror of it all!
It was one o'clock before Julius, searching the field with a lantern, came on him huddled against the tree with Ned's body still in his arms, staring into the dead face.
Again Betty Winter found in her work relief from despair. She had hoped for peace in the beauty and tenderness of Ned's chivalrous devotion. Yet his one letter reporting the meeting had revealed her mistake. The moment she had read his confession the impulse to scream her protest to John was all but resistless. She had tried in vain to find a way of writing to Ned to tell him that she had deceived him and herself, and ask his forgiveness.
It was impossible to write to John under such conditions and she had suffered in silence. And then the wounded began to pour into Washington from Grant's front. The like of that procession of ambulances from the landing on Sixth Street to the hospitals on the hills back of the city had never been seen. The wounded men were brought on swift steamers from Aquia Creek. Floors and decks were covered with mattresses on which they lay as thickly as they could be placed. As the wounded died on the way they were moved to the bow and their faces covered.
At the landing tender hands were lifting them into the ambulances which slowly moved out in one line to the hospitals and back in a circle by another. These ambulances stretched in tragic, unbroken procession for three miles and never ceased to move on and on in an endless circle for three days and nights.
In an agony of anxiety Betty asked to be transferred to the landing that she might watch them fill the wagons. Her soul was oppressed with the certainty that John Vaughan would be found in one of them.
On the morning of the third day they were still coming in never-ending streams from the steamer decks. She wrung her hands in a moment of despair:
"Merciful God! Are they bringing back Grant's whole army?"
The patience of these suffering men was sublime. Only a sigh from one who would rise no more. Only a groan here and there from parched lips that asked for water.
At last came the ominous news for which she had watched and waited with sickening forebodings. TheRepublicanprinted the name of Captain John Vaughan among the wounded in the fight of Warren and Hancock's corps over the Weldon Railroad. There were only two thousand wounded men sent in on the steamers from the front after this battle, and they arrived at night.
Betty hurried to the landing and found that the ambulances had begun to move. She searched every face in vain, and when the last stretcher had passed out walked with trembling steps and scanned each silent covered face in the bow.
"Thank God," she murmured, "he's not there!"
She must begin now the patient search among the eighty thousand sick and wounded men in the city of sorrows on the hills.
She secured a hack and tried to reach the head of the procession and find the destination of the first wagons that had left before her arrival.
It was after midnight. A thunder storm suddenly rolled its dense clouds over the city and smothered the street lamps in a pall of darkness. The rain burst with a flash of lightning and poured in torrents. The electric display was awe-inspiring. The horses in one of the ambulances in the long line stampeded and smashed the vehicle in front. The procession was stopped in the height of the storm. The vivid flame was now continuous and Betty could see the wagons standing in a mud-splashed row for a mile, the lightning play bringing out in startling outline each horse and vehicle.
From every ambulance was hanging a fringe of curious objects shining white against the shadows when suddenly illumined. Betty looked in pity and awe. They were the burning fevered arms and legs and heads of the suffering wounded men eager to feel the splash of the cooling rain.
A full week passed before her search ended and she located him in one of the big new buildings hastily constructed of boards.
With trembling step she started to go straight to his cot. The memory of his brutal stare that day stopped her and she scribbled a line and sent it to him: