Ralph wondered who Eddie was, but he waited patiently. Bill's eyes burned with a luster the boy had never seen there before. The sick man's face was very thin. The brown tint that outdoor life always gives had faded, and the sharp features looked more pinched and wan from their pallor. He went on in a weak and trembling voice:
“She was a beauty, and I was powerful fond of her. Her eyes were like a young fawn's, and her hair was brown as the chestnuts when they ripen in the sun. She liked Frank better nor me, and she told me so. Then when they were married, I hated him bitterly. But when the little fellow come, and they sent for me, somehow from the first time I took the little tot in my arms, and he smiled up into my face, all my anger died out. After that I would have died sooner than harm his daddy. They were happy with each other. But he died when the lad was ten or so, and left the poor wife alone. I didn't know how to comfort her, and she grieved continually. One day, when he was quite a lad, nearly sixteen, and needed his mother most, they found her dead on her husband's grave. Ah, that is the way some women love!
“That nigh killed me, but I meant to be a good friend to the boy. They took even that comfort from me, for they carried him away down South to his father's folks, and I never seed him again.”
The man's face was fever-flushed now, and his words came almost in a whisper. He tossed uneasily from side to side.
“Ralph, my head bothers me—it aches so strangely. I wish—”
But the wish was never told. A wild look came over his face, his words became incoherent. A delirium had seized him, and kindly as he was tended by the nurses and his comrades, he never regained his senses. A few days of apparent suffering, and Bill Elliotts kindly heart ceased to beat. The uncouth, rugged, but brave soldier had passed on to the Great Beyond.
[Original]
It was late in the afternoon of a raw November day, while the winds shrieked mournfully, when they carried him to a little valley in which they had dug a grave, into whose depth they lowered the body of a brave and true soldier, who never shirked a duty. The chaplain, a plain and tender, man, read impressively that beautiful Psalm: