He was feeling in the trousers pockets where securely pinned in the bottom of one was the half sheet of paper which we had fastened in the top of Charlie’s cap because it was too large. The paper was written over in a scrawly hand which was not Charlie’s, and Fan read it aloud with the tears streaming down her cheeks, just as mine are falling now, as I copy it verbatim:
“Dear Father and Fan-and-Ann:
“I am dying under a tree in the woods with a bullet in me and a boy’s cap stuffed into the wound to keep the blood back, while I tell him what to write. Lucky Fan-and-Ann thought to put that paper in my cap. The boy, who is a Yankee, found me and brought me some water and covered me with his coat when I got cold and stuffed his cap into the hole and cried over me, and I cried too, and we’ve talked it over and are as sorry as we can be—about the war, I mean. I hope I didn’t kill anybody and he hopes he didn’t, and his left hand is almost shot away and hurts him awful, but he’s going to stick to me till I’m dead. Then I’ve told him how to find his way to you and tell you about me, and you must take care of him and not let them get him. He don’t want to go to prison, and I don’t want to have him, and he’s going to change clothes with me so as to look like a confederate. We’ve said the Lord’s Prayer together, and Now I lay me, and the Creed, and dearly beloved, and everything we could think of and he knows them just as I do and I reckon I’m all right with God, only I’d like to die at home. It’s getting dark and the boy is tired and I am faint. Kiss little Katy for me. I wish I could see you all again.
“Good-bye, be kind to the boy. Give my respects to Phyllis.
“Charlie.”
This was the letter and I need not say that the blue uniform was not burned; neither did I know what became of it until after the funeral was over and I had courage to go into my brother’s room where I found it hanging on the wall and over it the Stars and Stripes which Fan had brought from their hiding place and put above the faded blue, from which the blood stains could not be effaced, although Phyllis had washed it two or three times. Every day Fan and I went in and looked at it and cried over it and talked of The Boy and wondered who he was and when, if ever, he would come.
“What shall you do if he does?” I asked her once, but she only glared at me like a tiger and I was glad to escape from the scornful gleam of her eyes.
And thus the weeks glided into months and it was spring again and the Virginia woods were lovely in their dress of green; the robins were building their nests in the trees and the lilies we were to lay on Charlie’s grave at Easter were just breaking into bloom. Father had gone to visit a patient, Katy was at school, and Fan and I sat by the dining-room fire when Phyllis came in, and, cautiously shutting the door, said in a mysterious whisper, “He’s done come.”
“Who has come?” I asked, and Phyllis replied, “The Boy, to be sho’; him you’re spectin’, honey, Mas’r Charles’s boy, and oh, de Lord, such a bag of bones, and so scar’t for fear he’ll be took.”
“Where is he?” Fan asked, springing to her feet.