Janice ran to the door. "Oh, Marty!" she cried. "Are you all right?"
"Right as rain," he assured her.
"We are going up nearer the battle-line. Oh, Marty! think of it! I may see daddy to-day!"
"Great!" he responded. "I hope the fight ain't all over when we get there."
They were yet ten miles from the Alderdice Mine and the train was more than an hour pulling that distance. They stopped often; and when the train did move it was at a snail's pace.
All the time the machine guns rattled like shaking pebbles in a cannister, the rifles popped and the shells exploded resonantly. Now and then they descried smoke above the tree tops. Occasionally they passed burning buildings.
And then appeared—more hateful sight than all else—the dead body of a man lying beside the railroad track, face down, the back of his head all gory.
He was a little man. His hand still grasped a brown rifle almost as tall as himself.
The laboring train halted directly beside the dead man. Marty dropped down from the rear step and went to the corpse. He turned it over with curiosity.
And then suddenly there shot through the boy from the North a feeling of such nausea and horror that he was destined ever to remember it.