ndering, we crept stealthily
out, and approached the man. When we got to him the moon revealed him
distinctly. He was lying on his back, with his arms abroad; his
mouth was open and his chest heaving with long gasps, and his white
shirt-front was all splashed with blood. The thought shot through me
that I was a murderer; that I had killed a man--a man who had never done
me any harm. That was the coldest sensation that ever went through my
marrow. I was down by him in a moment, helplessly stroking his forehead;
and I would have given anything then--my own life freely--to make him
again what he had been five minutes before. And all the boys seemed
to be feeling in the same way; they hung over him, full of pitying
interest, and tried all they could to help him, and said all sorts of
regretful things. They had forgotten all about the enemy; they thought
only of this one forlorn unit of the foe. Once my imagination persuaded
me that the dying man gave me a reproachful look out of his shadowy
eyes, and it seemed to me that I would rather he had stabbed me than
done that. He muttered and mumbled like a dreamer in his sleep, about
his wife and child; and I thought with a new despair, 'This thing that I
have done does not end with him; it falls upon them too, and they never
did me any harm, any more than he.'

In a little while the man was dead. He was killed in war; killed in fair
and legitimate war; killed in battle, as you might say; and yet he
was as sincerely mourned by the opposing force as if he had been their
brother. The boys stood there a half hour sorrowing over him, and
recalling the details of the tragedy, and wondering who he might be, and
if he were a spy, and saying that if it were to do over again they would
not hurt him unless he attacked them first. It soon came out that mine
was not the only shot fired; there were five others--a division of
the guilt which was a grateful relief to me, since it in some degree
lightened and diminished the burden I was carrying. There were six shots
fired at once; but I was not in my right mind at the time, and my heated
imagination had magnified my one shot into a volley.

The man was not in uniform, and was not armed. He was a stranger in the
country; that was all we ever found out about him. The thought of him
got to preying upon me every night; I could not get rid of it. I could
not drive it away, the taking of that unoffending life seemed such a
wanton thing. And it seemed