CHAPTER XXVIII.
The days fell dark for the Confederacy. It seemed that the whole world had sprung up in arms against the South. Stronghold after stronghold was taken, and Richmond itself was threatened. No hope was left to illumine the soldier's heart; he had followed a bright phantom, year after year, expecting it to lead him out of the wilderness, but he was becoming deeper and more darkly involved in the thicket, and now the phantom was fading. In his haversack, he carried roasted acorns and pieces of sugar-cane, and his enemies, in blood his brothers, shook their heads and marveled at his courage, for he was just as ready to fight as he had been on the morning after Bull Run. To face death at morning, to shed his blood at noon, to lie down supperless upon the wet ground at night, was a duty that he was not there to question, but to discharge.
One night my master and I occupied a room in a deserted farm-house near Richmond. About us lay a broken army and the scattered fragments of a civilization.
"A few more days will settle it, I think, Dan," he said. Sitting on a box, with one leg drawn up and with his hands clasped over his knee, he was gazing at the lightwood sputtering in the fire-place, and upon his thoughtful countenance a black shadow and a yellow light alternately arose and fell. "Only a few more days and most of us may be shot or permitted to go home. Who would have believed that we could have gone through such a time since Jane stood on the stile-block waving the silk flag she had made for me. And I can't carry even a scrap of it back to her. Do you know one thing that I'm going to do if I'm permitted to go home?" he asked, his face brightening. "I am going to acknowledge to father that I was wrong, not in fighting so hard after I got in, but in permitting a glamour to blind me in the first place. The most gigantic mistake of the age. I was like you, Dan. I followed my heart rather than my judgment. But you are free. I am your master no longer. Don't turn away. I don't reproach you; I congratulate you. If any man deserves freedom, you do. Better spread the blankets and let's try to get a little sleep. We need no alarm clock to wake us up. Brother Ulysses with his cannon will see to that."
And with his cannon he did see to it. We were aroused before the break of day, and by the time the sun came up we were in the thick of a fight. There came a charge—a wild rush, sword, pistol, bayonet—and when it had swept past, I was on the ground beside the man whose fortunes I had followed. He was desperately wounded. The farm-house was turned into a hospital and I took him to the room which we had occupied the night before. The weak remnant of our army was crushed. We were prisoners.
The hour was late. Precaution no longer was necessary and camp-fires were burning everywhere. A surgeon told me that Master could not live until morning. And this was to be his end, in an old house, a prisoner, the hungry dogs howling on the hill.
"Dan," he called. I was bending over him, my face close to his. "Are you here, Dan?"
"Yes, Mars. Bob."
"It's all over, Dan. And I don't see how it could have been otherwise. I seem to have been born for this hour. Dan, I want to be buried where I fell. And tell them not to disturb me, but to let me sleep there. Bury her letters with me. Tell the old man that I love him."