splendid, and gay--the
music, the soldiers, the people, the hurrahing! It stirred his sentient
little body through and through with a kind of joy, and he thought it so
strange that his mother's eyes were full of tears.

Just a few days later he had listened eagerly to the sharp, crackling
sound of guns and the rumbling thunder of cannon, so near that the air
seemed to vibrate. He and another little boy had stood and talked in
high, quick tones, bragging and predicting breathlessly the result of
the battle as they used the term "our men."

Finally they climbed the tallest oak on the lawn, and strained their
young eyes to see which was "gettin' whipped."

A little while after this he remembered following his father through the
long hospital ward. Over the first bed he saw him stoop and loosen the
white cotton bandages of a wounded man. On the next narrow cot there
was a slender boy of fifteen, who lay with clenched hands watching the
work of the surgeon. Then they passed a woman, who was gently bathing
the forehead of a man whose soldier days seemed likely to come to an
early end.

Some weeks had gone by, when one day he followed a party of men to
Marye's Heights. It was a short time after the battle of Fredericksburg.
A light snow had fallen the night before, which the wind whirled and
sifted about the dead, in a way that made them appear to be shuddering.
Once a sharp gust blew the snow off a body lying on its face, and the
boy's eyes filled. He scarcely heeded the talk of the men with whom he
had gone. His thoughts were held fast by the awful scene which lay
spread before his young eyes.

How often since then had the boy pictured himself a grown man, seated on
just such a fine horse and following Lee! It was always Lee; in his
dreamland through the heart of the battle he always followed General
Robert E. Lee, his hero, whom he had never seen, but whom he had carried
halo-crowned in his heart ever since he could remember.

And then the very saddest day in his life had come--the day when the
first news of Lee's surrender lay heavy on the hearts of the household.
For a while he had followed his mother as she went silently, with closed
white lips, from one duty to another. Finally he went out to seek
comfort from Uncle Jake, whom he found sitting with his back propped
against the side of the corn-crib, drawing little quick puffs of smoke
from his pipe.

"Uncle Jake," he said, "Lee's just _had_ to s'render."

"Ye