It was a harder task to move than he anticipated, for the ankle was swelling rapidly, and bearing the least weight upon it made the pain intolerable. Leaning on Isaac’s shoulder, he managed to make slow progress toward the stream bubbling so deliciously among the grass, and toward the music growing more and more distinct.
It was reached at last, and the mystery was solved. Leaning against a tree was a Confederate officer, whose white face told plainer than words could tell that never again would he be seen in the pine-shadowed home he had left so unwillingly but a few months before. Beside him upon the grass lay a boy, scarcely more than twelve years old, a drummer in a company of New England volunteers, both little hands shot entirely off, and the bleeding stumps bound carefully up in the handkerchief of the Rebel, who had smothered his own dying anguish for the sake of comforting that poor child, sobbing so piteously with pain.
“I didn’t s’pose any of you was so good, or I shouldn’t have come to fight you. Oh, mother, mother, they do ache so,—my hands,—my hands!” he said, the cry of contrition ending in a childish wail for the mother sympathy never more to be experienced by that drummer boy.
A smile flitted across the officer’s face as he replied, “Had we all known each other better, this war would not have been,” and the noble foe held the boy closer to his bleeding bosom, dipping his hand in the running stream, and laving the feverish brow where the drops of sweat were standing.
“What makes you so kind to me?” the dying boy asked, his dim eyes gazing wistfully into the face bending so sadly over him.
“I have a boy about your size,—Charlie we call him,” the stranger said.
“And I am Charlie, too,” the child replied, “Charlie Younglove, and my home is in New Hampshire, right on the mountain side. Father is dead, and we are poor, mother and I. That’s why I came to the war. I wanted to go to college, sometime. Do you think I’ll die? Will I never go home again?—never see mother nor little sister either?”
The soldier groaned, and bent still closer to the drummer boy, asking so earnestly if he must die. How could he tell him yes, and yet he felt he must; he would not be faithful to his trust if he withheld the knowledge, or failed to point that dying one to the only source of life.
“Yes, Charlie,” he answered, mournfully, “I think you will. Are you afraid to die? Did your mother never tell you of the Saviour?”
“Yes, yes, oh yes!” and the little face lighted up as at the mention of a dear friend. “I went to Sunday School, and learned of Jesus there. I’ve prayed to him every night and every morning since I came from home. I promised her I would,—mother, I mean,—and she prays, too. She said so in her letter, right here in my jacket pocket. Don’t you want to read it?”