"Be a man and a soldier!"
He had asked me for bread; I gave him a stone, and no wonder he dashed it back in my face. With a fierce cry he said:
"I hev been a man and a sojer long enough!"
Ah! verily had he, and much too long. Days before that he should have been "a boy again;" aye, a baby, a very infant—should have been soothed and softened and comforted with all the tenderness of mother-love; but even now, in this cruel extremity, every sign of sympathy was denied him. Some one put a hand gently but firmly on each of my shoulders, turned my back to him, took me out of the room, and I hurried away, while the air shuddered with his shrieks and groans. After he had been brought back to his place in the ward I could often hear him as I passed to and from my room, and even while I occupied it.
Once he saw me through the open door, and called, "Mutter! mutter!"
I went, knelt by him, took his hands, which were stretched appealingly to me, and spoke comforting words, while his blue eyes seemed ready to start from their sockets, as he clung to my hands with the old familiar cry:
"Oh, Mutter! Mutter!"
He was strapped down to his iron cot, about as closely as he had been to the amputation table, and the cot fastened to the floor. I had not been five minutes at his side when his special nurse hurried up and warned me to leave, saying:
"It's surgeon's orders. He's not going to have any babyin'!"
I drew my hands from the frantic grasp, took away that last hold on human sympathy, and hurried oat, while his cry of "Oh, mutter! mutter!" rung in my ears as I turned and looked on his pure high brow for the last time.