"Oh, what a pitiable sight!" I exclaimed. "The poor man looks like a gentleman, too, refined and distinguished looking. Poor fellow! He seems so angry and—so sick. Please, my darling, go to his rescue. Who knows but perhaps somewhere there are belonging to him little ones like ours?"
"Yes, please go, our papa, please, sir," echoed the pleading tones from the bed, "go and bring him in. He may have little ones of our kind and maybe he has a little one of our mama's kind, too, waiting for him somewhere."
My Soldier went out just as the round red rim of the sun burst into sight out of the east. There was a greater joy than a smile on his face when he came back. He had brought the stranger in and registered him in the hotel as our guest. Our lives frequently came in touch with this stranger's in the years that followed, and he told me that often and again when he was attacked by that same terrible, almost incurable, malady, the memory of the spirit of the child in the dawn of Good Friday had saved him.
A year later, when my Soldier went home and little Corbell was placed beside him, the children of this man came to me and said, "We are sorry Corbell is taken away, for we have been putting flowers on his grave every day, as our papa told us. But we can just as well put them here and on the General's grave, too."
The long Saturday passed and Easter Sunday came over the hills in the whiteness of its lilies and with melodious chimes rang out the blessed tidings that a Saviour had risen to bring Heaven to the world. But the golden light brought no dawn of hope to the hearts of those who watched sorrowfully over the little life that was drifting out upon that sea of glorious music into the Heaven of which it gave glad promise. Lulled to rest while the children sang their Easter carols, our boy went to join his brother angels. Through the open window the voices were sounding "Christ is risen" as he turned his head and laid his face against mine and reached out his little hand to my Soldier and Mary. I felt his spirit flutter and go. With a shivering sigh for me his soul slipped through the gate that Christ had risen to unlock.
During his long illness thoughtful friends from everywhere had been untiring in kindness. All their gifts he had willed to the poor children. His books he had left to his little brother, his ring to Mary, his "Confederate Orphan" fund to his father and me, saying, "Next quarter you will both be Confederate Orphans, for I shall be with the soldiers in the Lord's Army—maybe I'll be His little drummer boy, so I want you both to have that money."
His "Uncle Bev," as he called Judge Beverly Tucker, had given him a little enameled democratic rooster and on the Saturday evening before the Easter dawn he asked his father to give the rooster to the "poor handsome man who had come in the early morning when the sun was biggest and reddest and Good Friday was getting out of the way for Easter."
Weeks before he had selected his pall-bearers from among his little playfellows and had asked them all to wear white. To Dr. Minnegerode he said:
"Please, sir, Doctor, don't make the boys or any of my friends or relations cry but, please, sir, tell them something pretty, as you do at Sunday-school sometimes, and make them as happy as you can and have them all sing bright songs; and I want everybody to bring me red and blue and yellow and pink flowers, as well as white ones, and when you all get through and start back home I want the boys and girls to carry all the flowers with them because the flowers would be so lonesome out there that they'd fade and die. Birds don't care for flowers and children do." He often asked me, "Don't you think flowers can feel?"
The Easter blossoms were still fresh and fragrant in St. Paul's Church when fourteen of Corbell's little boy friends all in white, singing their Easter anthem, carried the little white casket that held the flower just budding into blossom in our Father's garden, across the street and up the aisle, followed by all the children of the Sunday-school and the many sympathizing friends.