"Oh, I just wondered if you'd like to change with me—guess you wouldn't for all the pain?"
Surprised at the man's reflection, John looked up at the black kindly face. "Get me some coffee."
"Yes, sir—what's that?" The morning gun rang out the sunrise hour.
"What's that, sir?" The flag was being hoisted on the slope below them.
"It's stopped at half-mast, sir! Who's dead now?"
"Go and ask, Josiah." McGregor came up as he spoke.
"The President was killed last night, John, by an assassin!"
"Lincoln killed!"
"Yes—I will tell you by and by—now this is all we know. I must make my rounds. We leave to-morrow for home."
John sat alone. This measureless calamity had at once on the thoughtful young soldier the effect of lessening the influences of his over-sensitive surrender to pain and its attendant power to weaken self-control. Like others, in the turmoil of war he had given too little thought to the Promethean torment of a great soul chained to the rock of duty—the man to whom like the Christ "the common people listened gladly." He looked back over his own physical suffering with sense of shame at his defeat, and sat up in his chair as if with a call on his worn frame to assert the power of a soul to hear and answer the summons of a great example.
"Thank you, Josiah," he said cheerfully. "No coffee is like yours to set a fellow up." A greater tonic was acting. "We go home to-morrow."
"That's good. Listen, sir—what's that?"