Quite So | Page 4

came like a
reproach that year to Virginia. The foliage, touched here and there with
prismatic tints, drooped motionless in the golden haze. The delicate
Virginia creeper was almost minded to put forth its scarlet buds again.
No wonder the lovely phantom--this dusky Southern sister of the pale
Northern June--lingered not long with us, but, filling the once peaceful
glens and valleys with her pathos, stole away rebukefully before the
savage enginery of man.
The preparations that had been going on for months in arsenals and
foundries at the North were nearly completed. For weeks past the air
had been filled with rumors of an advance; but the rumor of to-day
refuted the rumor of yesterday, and the Grand Army did not move.
Heintzelman's corps was constantly folding its tents, like the Arabs, and
as silently stealing away; but somehow it was always in the same place
the next morning. One day, at last, orders came down for our brigade to
move.
"We 're going to Richmond, boys!" shouted Strong, thrusting his head
in at the tent; and we all cheered and waved our caps like mad. You see,
Big Bethel and Bull Run and Ball's Bluff (the bloody B's, as we used to
call them) had n't taught us any better sense.
Rising abruptly from the plateau, to the left of our encampment, was a
tall hill covered with a stunted growth of red-oak, persimmon, and
chestnut. The night before we struck tents I climbed up to the crest to
take a parting look at a spectacle which custom had not been able to rob
of its enchantment. There, at my feet, and extending miles and miles
away, lay the camps of the Grand Army, with its camp-fires reflected
luridly against the sky. Thousands of lights were twinkling in every
direction, some nestling in the valley, some like fire-flies beating their
wings and palpitating among the trees, and others stretching in parallel
lines and curves, like the street-lamps of a city. Somewhere, far off, a
band was playing, at intervals it seemed; and now and then, nearer to, a
silvery strain from a bugle shot sharply up through the night, and
seemed to lose itself like a rocket among the stars--the patient,

untroubled stars. Suddenly a hand was laid upon my arm.
"I 'd like to say a word to you," said Bladburn.
With a little start of surprise, I made room for him on the fallen tree
where I was seated.
"I may n't get another chance," he said. "You and the boys have been
very kind to me, kinder than I deserve; but sometimes I 've fancied that
my not saying anything about myself had given you the idea that all
was not right in my past. I want to say that I came down to Virginia
with a clean record."
"We never really doubted it, Bladburn."
"If I did n't write home," he continued, "it was because I had n't any
home, neither kith nor kin. When I said the old folks were dead, I said
it. Am I boring you? If I thought I was"--
"No, Bladburn. I have often wanted you to talk to me about yourself,
not from idle curiosity, I trust, but because I liked you that rainy night
when you came to camp, and have gone on liking you ever since. This
is n't too much to say, when Heaven only knows how soon I may be
past saying it or you listening to it."
"That's it," said Bladburn, hurriedly, "that's why I want to talk with you.
I 've a fancy that I sha' n't come out of our first battle."
The words gave me a queer start, for I had been trying several days to
throw off a similar presentiment concerning him--a foolish
presentiment that grew out of a dream.
"In case anything of that kind turns up," he continued, "I 'd like you to
have my Latin grammar here--you 've seen me reading it. You might
stick it away in a bookcase, for the sake of old times. It goes against me
to think of it falling into rough hands or being kicked about camp and
trampled underfoot."

He was drumming softly with his fingers on the volume in the bosom
of his blouse.
"I did n't intend to speak of this to a living soul," he went on, motioning
me not to answer him; "but something took hold of me to-night and
made me follow you up here, Perhaps if I told you all, you would be
the more willing to look after the little book in case it goes ill with me.
When the war broke out I was teaching school down in Maine, in the
same village where my father was schoolmaster before me. The old
man