For the four and twenty hours following the battle, Braddock had remained sad and silent; never speaking except to say, "Who would have thought it?" The second day, he seemed more cheerful; for he said, "We shall better know how to deal with them another time." He spoke in high praise of the skill and courage shown by the Virginia rangers and other provincial troops during the whole engagement. He now saw, but too late, and to his deep regret, that he had not given these rough and hardy men half the credit due them as good soldiers; and also that he had made a fatal mistake in underrating the strength, skill, and address of the enemy he had been sent there to subdue. To Washington he made a frank and manly apology for the contempt and impatience with which he had so often treated his prudent and well-timed counsel. As if wishing to make still further amends for this, he bequeathed to him his faithful negro servant, Bishop, and his fine white charger, both of whom had helped to carry their wounded master from the field. On the fourth day after the battle, he died; having been kindly and tenderly cared for by Washington and his other surviving officers.
They dug him a grave by the roadside, not a stone's-throw from Fort Necessity, in the depths of that lonely wilderness; and there, before the summer morn had dawned, they buried him. In the absence of the chaplain, the funeral service was read by Washington, in a low and solemn voice, by the dim and flickering light of a torch. Fearing lest the enemy might be lurking near, and, spying out the spot, commit some outrage on his remains, they fired not a farewell shot over the grave of their unfortunate general,—that last tribute of respect to a departed soldier, and one he had himself paid, but a short time before, to a nameless Indian warrior. So there they laid him; and, to this day, the great highway leading from Cumberland to Pittsburg goes by the name of Braddock's Road.
I would, my dear children, have you dwell on these glimpses of a more manly and generous nature that brightened the closing hours of Braddock's life; because it is but Christian and just that we should be willing to honor virtue in whomsoever it may be found. With all his self-conceit and obstinacy, he had a kindly heart, and was a brave man; and had it been his lot to deal with a civilized enemy, instead of a savage one, he would, no doubt, have proved himself a skilful general. And we should not deal too harshly with the memory of a man, whose faults, however great they may have been, were more than atoned for by the inglorious death he died, and by "a name ever coupled with defeat."
XVII.
EXPLANATIONS.
Here, again, Uncle Juvinell paused in his story, and looked beamingly around on his little auditors. They were all sitting with their eyes bent earnestly on the burning logs, thinking deeply, no doubt, and looking as sober as tombstones in the light of a spring morning.
All on a sudden, Willie leaped from his chair, and gave a shrill Indian war-whoop, that threw the whole bevy into a terrible panic; making some of the smaller fry scream outright, and even Uncle Juvinell to blink a little. "There," said the youngster, "is something to ring in your ears for weeks hereafter, and never to be forgotten even to your dying day. I heard it the other night at the Indian circus, and have been practising it myself ever since. I fancy it must be a pretty fair sample of the genuine thing, or it wouldn't have scared you all up as it did." Whereupon Uncle Juvinell, frowning over his spectacles with his brows, and laughing behind them with his eyes, bade the young blood to pack himself into his chair again, and be civil; at the same time threatening to put him on a water-gruel diet, to bring his surplus spirits within reasonable bounds. Then all the little folks laughed, not so much at what their uncle had said, as to make believe they had not been frightened in the least; in which Willie, the cunning rogue, joined, that, under cover of the general merriment, he might snicker a little to himself at his own smartness.
"And now, my dear children," continued the good man, "hand me the notes you have written down, that I may see what it is you would have me explain."