o merciful) the song of a bird above his forgotten
grave. Quietly detaching his sabre from its supports, he handed it up to
the provost-marshal.

ONE OFFICER, ONE MAN

Captain Graffenreid stood at the head of his company. The regiment was
not engaged. It formed a part of the front line-of-battle, which
stretched away to the right with a visible length of nearly two miles
through the open ground. The left flank was veiled by woods; to the
right also the line was lost to sight, but it extended many miles. A
hundred yards in rear was a second line; behind this, the reserve
brigades and divisions in column. Batteries of artillery occupied the
spaces between and crowned the low hills. Groups of horsemen--generals
with their staffs and escorts, and field officers of regiments behind
the colors--broke the regularity of the lines and columns. Numbers of
these figures of interest had field-glasses at their eyes and sat
motionless, stolidly scanning the country in front; others came
and went at a slow canter, bearing orders. There were squads of
stretcher-bearers, ambulances, wagon-trains with ammunition, and
officers' servants in rear of all--of all that was visible--for still in
rear of these, along the roads, extended for many miles all that vast
multitude of non-combatants who with their various _impedimenta_ are
assigned to the inglorious but important duty of supplying the fighters'
many needs.

An army in line-of-battle awaiting attack, or prepared to deliver it,
presents strange contrasts. At the front are precision, formality,
fixity, and silence. Toward the rear these characteristics are less and
less conspicuous, and finally, in point of space, are lost altogether in
confusion, motion and noise. The homogeneous becomes heterogeneous.
Definition is lacking; repose is replaced by an apparently purposeless
activity; harmony vanishes in hubbub, form in disorder. Commotion
everywhere and ceaseless unrest. The men who do not fight are never
ready.

From his position at the right of his company in the front rank, Captain
Graffenreid had an unobstructed outlook toward the enemy. A half-mile of
open and nearly level ground lay before him, and beyond it an irregular
wood, covering a slight acclivity; not a human being anywhere visible.
He could imagine nothing more peaceful than the appearance of that
pleasant landscape with its long stretches of brown fields over which
the atmosphere was beginning to quiver in the he