Mary Bowman lifted the little boy to her shoulder. A strange, unaccountable excitement possessed her, she hardly knew what she was doing. She wondered what a battle would be like. She did not think of wounds, or of blood or of groans, but of great sounds, of martial music, of streaming flags carried aloft. She sometimes dreamed that her husband, though he had so unimportant a place, might perform some great deed of valor, might snatch the colors from a wounded bearer, and lead his regiment to victory upon the field of battle. And now, besides, this moment, he was marching home! She never thought that he might die, that he might be lost, swallowed up in the yawning mouth of some great battle-trench; she never dreamed that she would never see him again, would hunt for him among thousands of dead bodies, would have her eyes filled with sights intolerable, with wretchedness unspeakable, would be tortured by a thousand agonies which she could not assuage, torn by a thousand griefs beside her own. She could not foresee that all the dear woods and fields which she loved, where she had played as a child, where she had picnicked as a girl, where she had walked with her lover as a young woman, would become, from Round Top to the Seminary, from the Seminary to Culp's Hill, a great shambles, then a great charnel-house. She lifted the little boy to her shoulder and held him aloft.
"See, darling!" she cried. "See the bright things sparkling on the hill!"
"What are they?" begged Hannah Casey, trying desperately to see.
"They are bayonets and swords!"
She put the little boy down on the floor, and looked at him. Hannah Casey had clutched her arm.
"Hark!" said Hannah Casey.
Far out toward the shining cupola of the Seminary there was a sharp little sound, then another, and another.
"What is it?" shrieked Hannah Casey. "Oh, what is it?"
"What is it!" mocked Mary Bowman. "It is—"
A single, thundering, echoing blast took the words from Mary Bowman's lips.