"More self-conceit," sneered Harry Joslyn. "Just because you're so good looking, Alf. I knew that they weren't bothering about any boy orator, who does most of his shooting with his mouth, nor any young pill-peddler, who sings in the choir, and goes home with the prettiest girl. They were making a dead set on the best shot in the crowd, the young feller who'd come into the war for business, and told his folks at home before he started that he was going to shoot Jeff Davis with his own hand before he got back. That was me, I saw the Colonel of one o' the regiments point his sword straight at me as they came across the run, and tell his men to be sure and get me of all others."
"Why didn't you shoot him, if you're such a deadshot?" asked Gid Mackall.
"Why, I was just loading my gun, when I saw him, and as I went to put on the cap you were shaking so that it jarred the cap out of my hand, and before I could get another, the smoke became so thick I couldn't see anything."
"I shaking?" said Gib, with deep anger. "Now, Harry Josyn—"
"Come, boys; don't have a scrap, now," pleaded the serious-minded Alf. "Just think how many dead men are lying around. It looks like raising a disturbance at a funeral."
"That's so," said Jake Humphreys. "I don't think any of us is in shape to throw up anything to another about shaking. I own up that I was never so scared in all my life, and I feel now as if I ought to get down on my knees before everybody, and thank God Almighty that my life was spared. I ain't ashamed to say so."
"Bully for you, Jake," said Monty Scruggs, heartily. "We all feel that way, but hain't the nerve to say so. I wish the Chaplain would come around and open a meeting of thanksgiving and prayer."
"I tell you what's the next best thing," suggested Jake Humphreys. "Let Alf Russell sing one of those good old hymns they used to sing in the meetings back at home."
"Home!" How many thousands of miles away—how many years of time away—seemed to those flushed, overwrought boys, bivouacking on the deadstrewn battlefield, the pleasant cornfields, the blooming orchards, the drowsy hum of bees, the dear homes, sheltering fathers, mothers, and sisters; the plain white churches, with their faithful, grayhaired pastors, of the fertile plains of Indiana.
Alf Russell lifted up his clear, far-reaching boyish tenor, that they had heard a thousand times at devout gatherings, at joyful weddings, at sorrowing funerals, in that grandest and sweetest of hymns: