They had gone astray many times when, at nightfall, they came unawares upon the battlefield. A fog born of recent rains rose from the wet earth and hung in broken clouds. They paused beside a fence, uncertain of directions. Suddenly a cry from Joe arrested Wayne’s attention. Near at hand a horse and rider seemed flung upward into the misty starlight. The erect figure of the man, the arched neck and upraised foot of the horse, were startlingly vivid. The weird spectacle held them fascinated. At any moment the mystical horseman might take flight and gallop into the enfolding fog in pursuit of his lost legion. Other figures, equally fantastical, and ghostly monuments rose against the starry sky out of the drifting fog-ribbons. Joe, staring about, cried aloud in fear as he stumbled against a cannon. Wayne explained that they were on the Gettysburg battlefield and that these were memorials of dead soldiers.
“It’s too woozy for me,” declared Joe, and they sought the town and found their bags and lodging for the night.
They woke in the morning to find it Memorial Day, with excursions of veterans pouring in for a celebration. They followed their own devices, keeping away from the crowd, and late in the afternoon rested at the foot of Warren’s statue on Little Round Top. Wayne had bought a map and he opened it to fix the lines of Pickett’s assault. His blood tingled as he grasped the significance of the famous charge, gazing down upon the field of death. He explained it to Joe and they rose as by one impulse and took off their caps.
“They were men, Joe; it takes men with the real stuff in them to do that.”
Scattered over the field, sightseers followed the events of the long-vanished July days. An old man in the blue blouse of the Grand Army of the Republic toiled slowly up Little Round Top and stationed himself near them. He was muttering to himself, and so intent upon his own thoughts that he did not see them. He pointed with his hat as though demonstrating some controverted point, and shook his head, and Wayne and Joe eyed him wonderingly. The veteran’s lean figure was erect; he thrust his stick under his arm and looked down upon the battlefield, the wind playing softly in his gray hair. He turned toward Cemetery Ridge and saw the men behind him. A wild look came into his bleared eyes and he grasped Wayne’s arm, whispering:
“It’s in the bugle! It’s in the bugle!”
“You were a soldier in this battle?” asked Wayne, not understanding.
“I was in many battles, young man. It’s the bugle that does the mischief; pluck the heart out of the bugle and drum and men won’t kill each other any more. Many a man I’ve bugled down to death.”
He dropped his head upon his breast. A bird sang in the thicket below. On the heights beyond a bugle sounded, faint as though from a far-off time. The old man shrank away; then he began to speak, in the hoarse, broken voice of age, but coherently, as though reciting an oft-told tale:
“We had a boy captain with beautiful brown eyes, who had left college to go into the army. That boy, with his handful of cavalry, felt bigger than old Napoleon and we were as proud of him as he was of us. Early in the war we were sent out on a scout along the Chickahominy and were going back to our brigade when we ran plump into a bunch of the enemy’s cavalry that had been out feeling our line. They were just coming up out of a ford, and it was a surprise on both sides, but our captain laughed and said: