Meantime the lane and woods beyond, and even the slope itself, were crowding with supports and waiting troops. His own battery was still unlimbered, waiting orders. There was a slight commotion in the lane.
“Very well done, captain. Smartly taken and gallantly held.”
It was the voice of a general officer passing with his staff. There was a note of pleasant relief in its tone, and the middle-aged, care-drawn face of its owner was relaxed in a paternal smile. The young captain flushed with pleasure.
“And you seem to have had close work too,” added the general, pointing to the dead man.
The young officer hurriedly explained. The general nodded, saluted, and passed on. But a youthful aide airily lingered.
“The old man's feeling good, Courtland,” he said. “We've rolled 'em up all along the line. It's all over now. In point of fact, I reckon you've fired the last round in this particular fratricidal engagement.”
The last round! Courtland remained silent, looking abstractedly at the man it had crushed and broken at his feet.
“And I shouldn't wonder if you got your gold-leaf for to-day's work. But who's your sunny Southern friend here?” he added, following his companion's eyes.
Courtland repeated his story a little more seriously, which, however, failed to subdue the young aide's levity. “So he concluded to stop over,” he interrupted cheerfully. “But,” looking at the letter and photograph, “I say—look here! 'Sally Dows?' Why, there was another man picked up yesterday with a letter to the same girl! Doc Murphy has it. And, by Jove! the same picture too!—eh? I say, Sally must have gathered in the boys, and raked down the whole pile! Look here, Courty! you might get Doc Murphy's letter and hunt her up when this cruel war is over. Say you're 'fulfilling a sacred trust!' See? Good idea, old man! Ta-ta!” and he trotted quickly after his superior.
Courtland remained with the letter and photograph in his hand, gazing abstractedly after him. The smoke had rolled quite away from the fields on the left, but still hung heavily down the south on the heels of the flying cavalry. A long bugle call swelled up musically from below. The freed sun caught the white flags of two field hospitals in the woods and glanced tranquilly on the broad, cypress-fringed, lazy-flowing, and cruel but beautiful Southern river, which had all unseen crept so smilingly that morning through the very heart of the battle.