‘Take him away,’ said the colonel abruptly.
‘Cunnel!’ screamed Ephraim, struggling with the sergeant. ‘Spare him! Spare him! Ef ye will, I’ll jine yer army and fight against my own side till I drop. Ye’ll git one man more thet way.—Oh, what am I sayin’? I don’t want ter git off myself. On’y let him go! On’y let him go!’
‘For shame, Grizzly!’ called Lucius. ‘Don’t degrade yourself by talking to the ruffian.’
‘Oh, Luce, Luce!’ wailed Ephraim, suffering the sergeant to lead him away. ‘What shall I do? What shall I do? I brought it on ye. Oh, fergive me! Fergive me!’
‘Files! ‘Shun!’ cried Plowes, shoving Ephraim into his place. ‘Right face! Fifty paces to the front! Quick—march!’
The melancholy procession started, Lucius still holding his head high, and Ephraim crying and whining like a child that has been whipped.
‘Don’t cry, Grizzly,’ said Lucius, taking him by the arm. ‘They’ll think you’re a funk. I know better; but don’t give them the chance to say so. Don’t worry over me. It’s not your fault. I ought to have remembered what my General said. It’s a big price to pay for being disobedient; but it’s my fault, not yours. Oh, don’t cry so, dear old Grizzly!’
Their positions were curiously reversed. The soft, young southern voice was calm and clear, there was no shrinking in the bright blue eyes, and the quivering coward of half an hour before now marched to his death with a step as steady and bearing as firm as that of any of the cavaliers whose blood ran in his veins; while his comrade, all his steadfast courage gone, shuffled along, his gaunt frame seeming to shrivel in his clothes as he went, and his queer, old-looking face drawn with the agony of his fear and self-reproach. Only there was this difference—Lucius was thinking of himself, and that nerved him. Ephraim was thinking of Lucius, and that unmanned him.
‘Files! Halt! Front! Order—arms!’ shouted the sergeant, and the men stood still.
‘Now then, you two,’ said Plowes, ‘come with me.’ His rough heart was touched for once in his life by what he had just heard, and he muttered as they marched along: ‘I’ll make it thirty paces, and ye kin take yer chance.’ Such a favour! And having said thus much, he placed them and went back without another word.