at the same moment and through the darkness again came the sword into his breast. He felt the blood following the blade as it was snatched away, raised his revolver and fired his last shot squarely at his foe. The muzzle was less than two feet from his face and in the flash he saw Ned's look of horror, both brothers recognizing each other in the same instant. "John-my God, it's you!"

"Yes-yes-and it's you-God have mercy if I've killed you!"

In a moment the older brother had caught Ned's sinking body and lowered it gently on the leaves.

"It's all right, John, old man," he gasped. “If I had to die it's just as well by your hand. It's warit's hell—all hell-anyhow-what's the difference—” "But you mustn't die, Boy!" John whispered fiercely. "You mustn't, I tell you!"

"I didn't want to die," Ned sighed. "Life was— just-becoming-real-beautiful—wonderful

He stopped and drew a deep breath.

99

John bent lower and Ned's arm slipped toward his neck and his fingers touched the warm blood soaking his clothes.

“I'm—afraid—I-got-you, too,—John

"No, I'm all right-brace up, Boy. Pull that devil will of yours together-we've both got it-and live!"

The younger man's head had sunk on his brother's blood-stained breast.

"Now, look here, Ned, old man-this'll never dodon't-don't-give up!"

The answer came faint and low:

"Tell-Betty-when-you-see-her-that- with

my-last-breath-I-spoke-her-name-her

face-lights-the-dark-way

"You're going, Ned?"

The

The voice stopped. The battle had ceased. woods were still. The older brother could feel the slow rising and falling of the strong young chest as if the muscles in the glory of their perfect life refused to hear the call of Death.

He bent in the darkness and kissed the trembling lips and they, too, were still. He drew himself against the trunk of a tree and through the beautiful summer night held the body of his dead brother in his arms.

His fevered eyes were opened at last and he saw war as it is for the first time. It had meant nothing before this reckoning of the dead and wounded after battlesixty thousand men from the Rapidan to Cold Harbor in thirty days-ten thousand five hundred in the futile dash against Petersburg-four thousand in the crater -five thousand five hundred more now on this torn, twisted railroad, and all a failure-not an inch of ground gained.

These torn and mangled bundles of red rags he had watched the men dump into trenches and cover with dirt had meant nothing real. They were only loathsome things to be hidden from sight before the bugles called the army to move.

Now he saw a vision. Over every dark bundle on those blood-soaked fields bent a brother, a father, a

mother, a sister or sweetheart. He heard their cries of anguish until all other sounds were dumb.

The heaps of amputated legs and arms he had seen so often without a sigh were bathed now in tears. The surgeons with their hands and arms and clothes soaked with red-he saw them with the eyes of love-scene on scene in hideous review-the young officer at Cold Harbor whose leg they were cutting off without the use of chloroform, his face convulsed, his jaws locked as the knife crashed through nerve and sinew, muscle and artery. And those saws gnawing through bones-God in heaven, he could hear them all now-they were cutting and tearing those he loved.

He heard their terrible orders with new ears. For the first time he realized what they meant.

"Give them the bayonet now"

The low, savage, subdued tones of the officer had once thrilled his soul. The memory sickened him.

He could hear the impassioned speech of the Colonel as the men lay flat on their faces in the grass-the click of bayonets in their places-the look on the faces of the men eager, fierce, intense, as they sprang to their feet at the call:

"Charge!"

And the fight. A big, broad-shouldered brute is trying to bayonet a boy of fifteen. The boy's slim hand grips the steel with an expression of mingled rage and terror. He holds on with grim fury. A comrade rushes to his rescue. His bayonet misses the upper body of the strong man and crashes hard against his hip bone. The man with his strength seizes the gun, snatches it from his bleeding thigh and swings it over his head to brain his new antagonist, when the first

boy, with a savage laugh, plunges his bayonet through the strong man's heart and he falls with a dull crash, breaking the steel from the musket's muzzle and lies quivering, with the blood-spouting point protruding from his side. He understood now-these were not soldiers obeying orders-they were fathers and brothers and playmates, killing and maiming and tearing each other to pieces.

Lord God of Love and Mercy, the pity and horror of it all!

It was one o'clock before Julius, searching the field with a lantern, came on him huddled against the tree with Ned's body still in his arms, staring into the dead face.

CHAPTER XXXIV

LOVE'S PLEDGE

Again Betty Winter found in her work relief from despair. She had hoped for peace in the beauty and tenderness of Ned's chivalrous devotion. Yet his one letter reporting the meeting had revealed her mistake. The moment she had read his confession the impulse to scream her protest to John was all but resistless. She had tried in vain to find a way of writing to Ned to tell him that she had deceived him and herself, and ask his forgiveness.

It was impossible to write to John under such conditions and she had suffered in silence. And then the wounded began to pour into Washington from Grant's front. The like of that procession of ambulances from the landing on Sixth Street to the hospitals on the hills back of the city had never been seen. The wounded men were brought on swift steamers from Aquia Creek. Floors and decks were covered with mattresses on which they lay as thickly as they could be placed. As the wounded died on the way they were moved to the bow and their faces covered.

At the landing tender hands were lifting them into the ambulances which slowly moved out in one line to the hospitals and back in a circle by another. These ambulances stretched in tragic, unbroken procession for three miles and never ceased to move on and on in an endless circle for three days and nights.