"Aim!"
Then, drowning out the third command, "Fire!" came a flash of smoke and a loud report. The surgeons ran up to the spot. The bands and drum-corps of the division struck up a quick-step as the division faced to the right and marched past the grave, in order that in the dead form of its occupant we might all see that the doom of the deserter is death. It was a sad sight. As we moved along, many a rough fellow, from whom you would hardly have expected any sign of pity, pretending to be adjusting his cap so as to screen his eyes from the glare of the westering sun, could be seen furtively drawing his hand across his face and dashing away the tears that could not be kept from trickling down the bronzed and weather-beaten cheek. As we marched off the field, we could not help being sensible of the harsh contrast between the lively music to which our feet were keeping step, and the fearfully solemn scene we had just witnessed. The transition from the "Dead March" to the quick-step was quite too sudden. A deep solemnity pervaded the ranks as we marched homeward across the open field and into the sombre pine-woods beyond, thinking, as we went, of the poor fellow's home somewhere among the pleasant hills of Maryland, and of the sad and heavy hearts there would be there when it was known that he had paid the extreme penalty of the law.
CHAPTER XIV.
A TALE OF A SQUIRREL AND THREE
BLIND MICE.
"Andy, what is a shade-tail?"
We were encamped in an oak-forest on the eastern bank of the Rappahannock, late in the fall of 1863. We had built no winter-quarters yet, although the nights were growing rather frosty, and had to content ourselves with our little "dog-tents," as we called our shelters, some dozen or so of which now constituted our company row. I had just come in from a trip through the woods in quest of water at a spring near an old deserted log-house about a half-mile to the south of our camp, when, throwing down my heavy canteens, I made the above interrogatory of my chum.
Andy was lazily lying at full length on his back in the tent, reclining on a soft bed of pine-branches, or "Virginia feathers," as we called them, with his hands clasped behind his head, lustily singing—
"Tramp, tramp, tramp! the boys are marching!