“You're right—I was a soldier in the war between the States,” he said in a thickened, quick voice, which trembled just a little; “but I didn't serve with the Illinois troops. I didn't move to Illinois until after the war. My regiment was as good a regiment, though, and as game a regiment, as fought in that war on either side.”
Some six or eight broke generously into a brisk patter of handclapping at this, and from the exuberant Mr. Galloway came:
“Whirroo! That's right—stick up for yer own side always! Go on, me boy; go on!”
The urging was unnecessary. Watts was going on as though he had not been interrupted, as though he had not heard the friendly applause, as though his was a tale which stood in most urgent need of the telling:
“I'm not saying much of my first year as a soldier. I wasn't satisfied—well, I wasn't happily placed; I'll put it that way. I had hopes at the beginning of being an officer; and when the company election was held I lost out. Possibly I was too ambitious for my own good. I came to know that I was not popular with the rest of the company. My captain didn't like me, either, I thought. Maybe I was morbid; maybe I was homesick. I know I was disappointed. You men have all been soldiers—you know how those things go. I did my duty after a fashion—I didn't skulk or hang back from danger—but I didn't do it cheerfully. I moped and I suppose I complained a lot.
“Well, finally I left that company and that regiment. I just quit. I didn't quit under fire; but I quit—in the night. I think I must have been half crazy; I'd been brooding too much. In a day or two I realised that I couldn't go back home—which was where I had started for—and I wouldn't go over to the enemy. Badly as I had behaved, the idea of playing the outright traitor never entered my mind. I want you to know that. So I thought the thing over for a day or two. I had time for thinking it over—alone there in that swamp where I was hiding. I've never spoken of that shameful thing in my life since then—not until to-night. I tried not to think of it—but I always have—every day.
“Well, I came to a decision at last. I closed the book on my old self; I wiped out the past. I changed my name and made up a story to account for myself; but I thank God I didn't change flags and I didn't change sides. I was wearing that new name of mine when I came out of those woods, and under it I enlisted in a regiment that had been recruited in a state two hundred miles away from my own state. I served with it until the end of the war—as a private in the ranks.
“I'm not ashamed of the part I played those last three years. I'm proud of it! As God is my judge, I did my whole duty then. I was commended in general orders once; my name was mentioned in despatches to the War Department once. That time I was offered a commission; but I didn't take it. I bear in my body the marks of three wounds. I've got a chunk of lead as big as your thumb in my shoulder. There's a little scar up here in my scalp, under the hair, where a splinter from a shell gashed me. One of my legs is a little bit shorter than the other. In the very last fight I was in a spent cannon ball came along and broke both the bones in that leg. I've got papers to prove that from '62 to '65 I did my best for my cause and my country. I've got them here with me now—I carry them with me in the daytime and I sleep at night with them under my pillow.”
With his right hand he fumbled in his breast pocket and brought out two time-yellowed slips of paper and held them high aloft, clenched and crumpled up in a quivering fist.
“One of these papers is my honourable discharge. The other is a letter that the old colonel of my regiment wrote to me with his own hand two months before he died.”