“A trifle,” laughed Mohun.
But as he spoke, his frame tottered; his face assumed the hue of a corpse; and he would have fallen, had not Miss Georgia Conway started up unconsciously from the wounded man whom she was attending to, and supported the officer in her arms.
Mohun opened his eyes, and a grim smile came to his pale face.
“A pretty tableau!” I heard him murmur; “it would do to put in a romance. A cup of tea—or a pistol—that would finish—”
As he uttered these singular words, the blood gushed from his wounded shoulder, his eyes closed, and, his head falling on the bosom of the young girl, he fainted.
X. — THE SLIM ANIMAL.
Fleetwood was the first gun of the great campaign which culminated on the heights of Gettysburg. A week afterward, Lee’s columns were in motion toward Pennsylvania.
Was that invasion the dictate of his own judgment? History will answer. What is certain is, that the country, like the army, shouted “Forward!” The people were ablaze with wild enthusiasm; the soldiers flushed with the pride of their great victories of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. The authorities at Richmond shared the excitement, and the commissary-general, with unwonted humor, or in sober earnest, indorsed, it is said, upon a requisition for supplies: “If General Lee wishes rations, let him seek them in Pennsylvania.”