und--my neck--it's old times--again." And now the wound
tortured him for a while beyond speech. "You're with me, aren't you,
Harry?

"Well, there's this," he gasped on, "about my chums--they've been as
good and kind--marching, us, all wet and cold together--and it wasn't
their fault. If they had known--how I wanted--to be shot--for the
Union! It was so hard--to be--on the wrong side! But--"

He lifted his head and stared wildly at his brother, screamed rapidly,
as if summoning all his life for the effort to explain, "Drafted,
_drafted, drafted_--Harry, tell mother and father _that_. I was
_drafted_. O God, O God, what suffering! Both sides--I was on both
sides all the time. I loved them all, North and South, all,--but the
Union most. O God, it was so hard!"

His head fell back, his eyes closed, and Harry thought it was the end.
But once more Jack opened his blue eyes, and slowly said in a steady,
clear, anxious voice, "Mind you tell them I never fired high enough!"
Then he lay still in Harry's arms, breathing fainter and fainter till
no motion was on his lips, nor in his heart, nor any tremor in the
hands that lay in the hand of his brother in blue.

"Come, Harry," said Bader, stooping tenderly to the boy, "the order is
to march. He's past helping now. It's no use; you must leave him here
to God. Come, boy, the head of the column is moving already."

Mounting his horse, Harry looked across to Jack's form. For the first
time in two years the famous Louisiana brigade trudged on without
their unwilling comrade. There he lay, alone, in the Union lines,
under the rain, his marching done, a figure of eternal peace; while
Harry, looking backward till he could no longer distinguish his
brother from the clay of the field, rode dumbly on and on beside the
downcast procession of men in gray.

A TURKEY APIECE.

Not long ago I was searching files of New York papers for 1864, when
my eye caught the headline, "Thanksgiving Dinner for the Army." I had
shared that feast. The words brought me a vision of a cavalry brigade
in winter quarters before Petersburg; of the three-miles-distant and
dim steeples of the besieged city; of rows and rows of canvas-covered
huts sheltering the infantry corps that stretched interminably away
toward the Army of the James. I fancied I could hear again the great
guns of "Fort Hell" infrequently punctuating the far-away
picket-firing.

Rain, rain, and rain! How it fell on red Virginia that