“May I ask a little favor?” she said, rising. “Would you mind coming in a moment to see my grandfather?”
He stood up obediently, sheathed sabre in his left hand; she led the way across the hall and up the stairs, opened the door, and motioned toward the bed. At first he saw nothing save the pillows and snowy spread.
“Will you speak to him?” she whispered.
He approached the bed, cap in hand.
“He is very old,” she said; “he was a soldier of Washington. He desires to see a soldier of the Union.”
And now the bandmaster perceived the occupant of the bed, a palsied, bloodless phantom of the past—an inert, bedridden, bony thing that looked dead until its deep eyes opened and fixed themselves on him.
“This is a Union soldier, grandfather,” she said, kneeling on the floor beside him. And to the bandmaster she said in a low voice: “Would you mind taking his hand? He cannot move.”
The bandmaster bent stiffly above the bed and took the old man’s hand in his.
The sunlit room trembled in the cannonade.
“That is all,” said the girl simply. She took the fleshless hand, kissed it, and laid it on the bedspread. “A soldier of Washington,” she said dreamily. “I am glad he has seen you—I think he understands: but he is very, very old.”