is thing from him. Life
was not much to look forward to,--the stretch it had been before: study,
and the war, and hard common sense,--the theatre,--card-playing. Not
being a man, I cannot tell you how much his loss amounted to. I know,
going down the rutted wagon-road, his mild face fell slowly into a
haggard vacancy foreign to it: one or two people at the tavern where he
stopped asked him if he were ill: I think, too, that he prayed once or
twice to whatever God he had, looking up with dry eye and shut
lips,--dumb prayers, wrung out of some depth within, such as Christian
sent out of the slough, when he was like to die. But he did stop at the
tavern, and there drank some brandy to steady his nerves; and he did not
forget that there was an ambuscade of Rebels at Blue's Gap, and that he
was to share in the attack on them at daylight: he spurred his horse, as
he drew nearer Romney. Dode, being a woman, thinking love lost, sat by
the fire, looking vacantly at nothing. Yet the loss was as costly to him
as to her, and would be remembered as long.

He came up to the church where the meeting had been held. It was just
over; the crowded room was stifling with the smoke of tobacco and
tallow-candles; there was an American flag hanging over the pulpit, a
man pounding on a drum at the door, and a swarm of loafers on the steps,
cheering for the Union, for Jeff Davis, etc. Palmer dismounted, and made
his way to the pulpit, where Dyke, a lieutenant in his company, was.

"All ready, Dyke?"

"All right, Capt'n."

Palmer lingered, listening to the talk of the men. Dyke had been an
Ohio-River pilot; after the troubles began, had taken a pork-contract
under Government; but was lieutenant now, as I said. It paid better than
pork, he told Palmer,--a commission, especially in damp weather. Palmer
did not sneer. Dykes, North and South, had quit the hog-killing for the
man-killing business, with no other motive than the percentage, he knew;
but he thought the rottenness lay lower than their hearts. Palmer stood
looking down at the crowd: the poorer class of laborers,--their limbs
cased in shaggy blouses and green baize leggings,--their faces dogged,
anxious as their own oxen.

"'Bout half on 'em Secesh," whispered Jim Dyke. "'T depends on who
burned their barns fust."

Jim was recruiting to fill up some vacancies in Palmer's company. He had
been tolerably successful that day; as he said, with a wink, to the
Captain,--

"The twenty dol