tracks!" snickered Dinkey Cott behind him. "I'll step on yer."

Dinkey had never seemed more impish, unholy and incongruous. They seemed to stand there a long time. The shells kept howling and whizzing around; they howled till they burst, and then they whizzed. And now and then some one would cry out and fall. It was bad for the nerves. The men were growling.

"Aw, cap, give us a chance!"

"It ain't my fault, boys. I got to wait for orders, same as you."

Dinkey poked the deacon's legs with the butt of his rifle.

"Say, it's rotten, ain't it? Say, cully, my ma don't like me full o' holes. How's yours?"

The other gripped his rifle tight and thought of nothing in particular.

Was it five hours that passed, or twenty, or one? Then they started, and the town was gone behind their hurrying feet. Over a stretch of broken level, rush and tramp and gasping for breath; fences and rocks ahead, clumps of trees and gorges; ground growing rougher and steeper, but that was nothing. If there was anything in the way you went at it and left it behind. You plunged up a hill, and didn't notice it. You dove into a gully, and it wasn't there. Time was a liar, obstacles were scared and ran away. But half-way up the last pitch ran a turnpike, with a stone wall in front that spit fire and came nearer and nearer. It seemed creeping down viciously to meet you. Up, up, till the powder of the guns almost burned the deacon's face, and the smoke was so thick he could only see the red flashes.

And then suddenly he was alone. At least there was no one in sight, for the smoke was very thick. Company G all dead, or fallen, or gone back. There was a clump of brambles to his left. He dropped to the ground, crept behind it and lay still. The roar went on, the smoke rolled down over him and sometimes a bullet would clip through the brambles, but after a time the small fire dropped off little by little, though the cannon still boomed on.

His legs were numb and his heart beating his sides like a drum. The smoke was blowing away down the slope. He lifted his head and peered through the brambles; there was the stone wall not five rods away, all lined along the top with grimy faces. A thousand rifles within as many yards, wanting nothing better than to dig a round hole in him. He dropped his head and closed his eyes.

His thoughts were so stunned that the slowly lessening cannonade seemed like a dream, and he hardly noticed when it had ceased, and he began to hear voices, cries of wounded men and other men talking. There was a clump of trees to the right, and two or three crows in the treetops cawing familiarly. An hour or two must have passed, for the sun was down and the river mist creeping up. He lay on his back, staring blankly at the pale sky and shivering a little with the chill.

A group of men came down and stood on the rocks above. They could probably see him, but a man on his back with his toes up was nothing particular there. They talked with a soft drawl. "Doggonedest clean-up I ever saw."

"They hadn't no business to come up heah, yuh know. They come some distance, now."

"Shuah! We ain't huntin' rabbits. What'd yuh suppose?"

Then they went on.

The mist came up white and cold and covered it all over. He could not see the wall any longer, though he could hear the voices. He turned on his face and crawled along below the brambles and rocks to where the clump of trees stood with a deep hollow below them. They were chestnut trees. Some one was sitting in the hollow with his back against the roots.

During the rush Dinkey Cott fairly enjoyed himself. The sporting blood in him sang in his ears, an old song that the leopard knows, it may be, waiting in the mottled shadow, that the rider knows on the race course, the hunter in the snow—the song of a craving that only excitement satisfies. The smoke blew in his face. He went down a hollow and up the other side. Then something hot and sudden came into the middle of him and he rolled back against the roots of a great tree.

"Hully gee! I'm plunked!" he grumbled disgustedly.

For the time he felt no pain, but his blood ceased to sing in his ears. Everything seemed to settle down around him, blank and dull and angry. He felt as if either the army of the North or the army of the South had not treated him rightly. If they had given him a minute more he might have clubbed something worth while. He sat up against a tree, wondered what his chance was to pull through, thought it poor, and thought he would sell it for a drink.

The firing dropped off little by little, and the mist was coming up. Dinkey began to see sights. His face and hands were hot, and things seemed to be riproaring inside him generally. The mist was full of flickering lights, which presently seemed to be street lamps down the Bowery. The front windows of Reilly's saloon were glaring, and opposite was Gottstein's jewelry store, where he had happened to hit one Halligan in the eye for saying that Babby Reilly was his girl and not Dinkey's; and he bought Babby a 90-cent gold ring of Gottstein, which proved Halligan to be a liar. The cop saw him hit Halligan, too, and said nothing, being his friend. And Halligan enlisted in Company G with the rest of the boys, and was keeled over in the dark one night on picket duty, somewhere up country. All the gang went into Company G. The captain was one of the boys, and so was Pete Murphy, the big lieutenant. He was a sort of ward sub-boss, was Pete.

"Reilly, he's soured on me, Pete. I dun-no wot's got the ol' man."

The lights seemed to grow thick, till everything was ablaze.

"Aw, come off! Dis ain't de Bowery," he muttered, and started and rubbed his eyes.

The mist was cold and white all around him, ghostly and still, except that there was a low, continual mutter of voices above, and now and then a soft moan rose up from somewhere. And it seemed natural enough that a ghost should come creeping out of the ghostly mist, even that it should creep near to him and peer into his face, a ghost with a gray chin beard and haggard eyes.

"I'm going down," it whispered. "Come on. Don't make any noise."

"Hully gee!" thought Dinkey. "It's the Pope!"

A number of things occurred to him in confusion. The deacon did not see he was hit. He said to himself:

"I ain't no call to spoil 'is luck, if he is country."

He blinked a moment, then nodded and whispered hoarsely: "Go on."

The deacon crept away into the mist. Dinkey leaned back feebly and closed his eyes.

"Wished I'd die quick. It's rotten luck. Wished I could see Pete."

The deacon crept down about two hundred yards, then stopped and waited for the young man Cott. The night was closing in fast A cry in the darkness made him shiver. He had never imagined anything could be so desolate and sad. He thought he had better see what was the matter with Dinkey. He never could make out afterward why it had seemed necessary to look after Dinkey. There were hundreds of better men on the slopes. Dinkey might have passed him. It did not seem very sensible business to go back after that worthless little limb of Satan. The deacon never thought the adventure a credit to his judgment.

But he went back, guiding himself by the darker gloom of the trees against the sky, and groped his way down the hollow, and heard Dinkey muttering and babbling things without sense. It made the deacon mad to have to do with irresponsible people, such as go to sleep under the enemy's rifles and talk aloud in dreams. He pulled him roughly by the boots, and he fell over, babbling and muttering. Then it came upon the deacon that it was not sleep, but fever. He guessed the young man was hit somewhere. They had better be going, anyway. The Johnnies must have out a picket line somewhere. He slipped his hands under Dinkey and got up. He tried to climb out quietly, but fell against the bank. Some one took a shot at the noise, spattering the dirt under his nose. He lifted Dinkey higher and went on. Dinkey's mutterings ceased. He made