ered itself into a bunch to complete its trip.

In this last length of journey the men began to show strange emotions.
They hurried with nervous fear. Some who had been dark and unfaltering
in the grimmest moments now could not conceal an anxiety that made them
frantic. It was perhaps that they dreaded to be killed in
insignificant ways after the times for proper military deaths had
passed. Or, perhaps, they thought it would be too ironical to get
killed at the portals of safety. With backward looks of perturbation,
they hastened.

As they approached their own lines there was some sarcasm exhibited on
the part of a gaunt and bronzed regiment that lay resting in the shade
of trees. Questions were wafted to them.

"Where th' hell yeh been?"

"What yeh comin' back fer?"

"Why didn't yeh stay there?"

"Was it warm out there, sonny?"

"Goin' home now, boys?"

One shouted in taunting mimicry: "Oh, mother, come quick an' look at
th' sojers!"

There was no reply from the bruised and battered regiment, save that
one man made broadcast challenges to fist fights and the red-bearded
officer walked rather near and glared in great swashbuckler style at a
tall captain in the other regiment. But the lieutenant suppressed the
man who wished to fist fight, and the tall captain, flushing at the
little fanfare of the red-bearded one, was obliged to look intently at
some trees.

The youth's tender flesh was deeply stung by these remarks. From under
his creased brows he glowered with hate at the mockers. He meditated
upon a few revenges. Still, many in the regiment hung their heads in
criminal fashion, so that it came to pass that the men trudged with
sudden heaviness, as if they bore upon their bended shoulders the
coffin of their honor. And the youthful lieutenant, recollecting
himself, began to mutter softly in black curses.

They turned when they arrived at their old position to regard the
ground over which they had charged.

The youth in this contemplation was smitten with a large astonishment.
He discovered that the distances, as compared with the brilliant
measurings of his mind, were trivial and ridiculous. The stolid trees,
where much had taken place, seemed incredibly near. The time, too, now
that he reflected, he saw to have been short. He wondered at the number
of emotions and events that had been crowded into such little spaces.
Elfin thoughts must have exaggerated and enlarged everything, he said.