Read The Little Regiment, and Other Episodes of the American Civil War Page 7

  VII.

  After the red round eye of the sun had stared long at the little plainand its burden, darkness, a sable mercy, came heavily upon it, and thewan hands of the dead were no longer seen in strange frozen gestures.

  The heights in front of the plain shone with tiny camp-fires, and fromthe town in the rear, small shimmerings ascended from the blazes of thebivouac. The plain was a black expanse upon which, from time to time,dots of light, lanterns, floated slowly here and there. These fieldswere long steeped in grim mystery.

  Suddenly, upon one dark spot, there was a resurrection. A strange thinghad been groaning there, prostrate. Then it suddenly dragged itself to asitting posture, and became a man.

  The man stared stupidly for a moment at the lights on the hill, thenturned and contemplated the faint colouring over the town. For somemoments he remained thus, staring with dull eyes, his face unemotional,wooden.

  Finally he looked around him at the corpses dimly to be seen. No changeflashed into his face upon viewing these men. They seemed to suggestmerely that his information concerning himself was not too complete. Heran his fingers over his arms and chest, bearing always the air of anidiot upon a bench at an almshouse door.

  Finding no wound in his arms nor in his chest, he raised his hand to hishead, and the fingers came away with some dark liquid upon them. Holdingthese fingers close to his eyes, he scanned them in the same stupidfashion, while his body gently swayed.

  The soldier rolled his eyes again toward the town. When he arose, hisclothing peeled from the frozen ground like wet paper. Hearing the soundof it, he seemed to see reason for deliberation. He paused and looked atthe ground, then at his trousers, then at the ground.

  Finally he went slowly off toward the faint reflection, holding hishands palm outward before him, and walking in the manner of a blind man.