o he saw the men
in retreat who had shot Lyon, and all over the field the firing had
ceased. As he hurried through the underbrush, Ward ran into Bob
Hendricks hiding in the thicket. Ward took the child's hand and he
began to sob: "I saw Elmer go up that hill, Captain; I saw him go up
with the horses and he ain't come back." But Ward did not understand
him, and hurried the little fellow along with John to the surgeon.

Then Ward left them, and when John Barclay opened his eyes, Bob
Hendricks was sitting beside him. A great lint bandage was about
John's foot, and they were in a wagon jolting over a rutty road. He
did not speak for a long time, and then he asked, "Did we whip 'em?"

And Bob nodded and said, "Cap says so!"

The children clasped hands and talked of many things that passed from
the boy's mind. But his mind recorded that the next day in the
hospital Martin Culpepper said, "Bob can't come to-day, Johnnie; you
know he's tendin' Elmer's funeral." The boy must have opened his eyes,
for the man said, "Why, Johnnie, I thought you knew; yes; they found
him dead that night--right under the reb--under the enemies' guns on
the brink of the hill."

The child's eyes filled with tears, but he did not cry. His emotion
was spent. The two sat together for a time, and the little boy said,
"Why didn't you go, Mr. Culpepper?" And the man replied: "Me?
Oh--why--Oh, yes, I got a little scratch here in my leg, and they
won't let me out of here. There's Watts over there in the next cot; he
got a little scratch too--didn't you, Watts?" Watts and the boy
smiled at each other, but John did not see Bob again for years. Miss
Hendricks came and took him to their father's people in Ohio.

One day some one came in the hospital where John and Watts and Martin
Culpepper were lying, and began to call out mail for the men, and the
third name the corporal called was "Captain Martin Culpepper"; and
when they brought him a long official envelope with General Fremont's
name on it, Martin Culpepper held it in his hands, looked at the
inscription, read the word "captain" again and again, and could not
speak for choked joy. And tears so dimmed his eyes that he could not
see the "large white plumes" of chivalry, but the men in the beds
cheered as they heard the words the corporal read.

With such music as that in his ears, and with his soul stirred by the
events about him, Watts McHurdie, lying in the hospital, wrote the
song that made him famou