They told us that they had caught the Copperhead after a ten-mile chase, and that he was badly hurt, for the wagon had upset and the fellow was beneath it. Ramsey asked my father to go at once to see what could be done for him.
The man, however, was quite dead when my father reached him. There was a purple mark around his neck: and the opinion seemed to be that he had got tangled up in the harness or something.
The war-time months went dragging by, and the burden of gloom in the air seemed to lift; for when the Chicago "Tribune" was read each evening in the post-office it told of victories on land and sea. Yet it was a joy not untinged with black; for in the church across from our house, funerals had been held for farmer boys who had died in prison-pens and been buried in Georgia trenches.
One youth there was, I remember, who had stopped to get a drink at our pump, and squirted a mouthful of water over me because I was handy.
One night the postmaster was reading aloud the names of the killed at Gettysburg, and he ran right on to the name of this boy. The boy's father sat there on a nail-keg, chewing a straw. The postmaster tried to shuffle over the name and on to the next.
"Hi! Wha—what's that you said?"
"Killed in honorable battle—Snyder, Hiram," said the postmaster with a forced calmness.
The boy's father stood up with a jerk. Then he sat down. Then he stood up again and staggered his way to the door and fumbled for the latch like a blind man.
"God help him! he's gone to tell the old woman," said the postmaster as he blew his nose on a red handkerchief.