around the barn,
in at the door, and flung herself sobbing beside the body of the soldier
in blue.

The uproar of the fight became at last coherent, inasmuch as one party
was giving shouts of supreme exultation. The firing no longer sounded in
crashes; it was now expressed in spiteful crackles, the last words of
the combat, spoken with feminine vindictiveness.

Presently there was a thud of flying feet. A grimy panting, red-faced
mob of troopers in blue plunged into the barn, became instantly frozen
to attitudes of amazement and rage, and then roared in one great chorus,
"He's gone!"

The girl who knelt beside the body upon the floor turned toward them her
lamenting eyes and cried: "He's not dead, is he? He can't be dead?"

They thronged forward. The sharp lieutenant who had been so particular
about the feed box knelt by the side of the girl and laid his head
against the chest of the prostrate soldier. "Why, no," he said, rising
and looking at the man. "He's all right. Some of you boys throw some
water on him."

"Are you sure?" demanded the girl, feverishly.

"Of course! He'll be better after awhile."

"Oh!" said she softly, and then looked down at the sentry. She started
to arise, and the lieutenant reached down and hoisted rather awkwardly
at her arm.

"Don't you worry about him. He's all right."

She turned her face with its curving lips and shining eyes once more
toward the unconscious soldier upon the floor. The troopers made a lane
to the door, the lieutenant bowed, the girl vanished.

"Queer," said a young officer. "Girl very clearly worst kind of rebel,
and yet she falls to weeping and wailing like mad over one of her
enemies. Be around in the morning with all sorts of doctoring--you see
if she ain't. Queer."

The sharp lieutenant shrugged his shoulders. After reflection he
shrugged his shoulders again. He said: "War changes many things; but it
doesn't change everything, thank God!"

A MYSTERY OF HEROISM.

The dark uniforms of the men were so coated with dust from the incessant
wrestling of the two armies that the regiment almost seemed a part of
the clay bank which shielded them from the shells. On the top of the
hill a battery was arguing in tremendous roars with some other guns, and
to the eye of the infantry, the artillerymen, the guns, the caissons,
the horses, were distinctly outlined upon the blue sky. When a piece was
fired, a red streak as round as a log flashed low in the heave