On his way home that day, the minister met Mr. Granger, and the two stopped to look at a Vermont regiment that was marching through the city from the Maine depot to the New York depot. As they stopped, the regiment also was stopped by some obstruction in the street.
The attention of the gentlemen was presently attracted to a boy in the rank nearest them, a bright, resolute-looking lad, with a ruddy face and smiling lips. But it needed not a very keen observer to see in that smile the pathetic bravado of a boy who had just torn himself away from home, and was struggling to hide the grief with which his heart was swelling.
"What is a boy like you in the army for?" Mr. Granger asked.
The young soldier looked up, his bright eyes bold with excitement. "When men won't go, the boys have got to go," he answered. "Do you want to take my place?"
Mr. Granger said no more.
Beside this boy stood a middle aged man who had an uncommonly good face. He was tall, somewhat awkward, and had that look of unsophisticated manliness, honest candor, and plain common sense, which is found only in the country. One could not fancy him a dweller among masked city faces, breathing air pent in narrow streets, walking daily on pavements, and knowing no shades but those of brick and stone. His place was tramping through wild forests, not with any romantic intent, but measuring with practised eyes the trunk of some tree in which he saw what woodsmen call a "good stick," and chopping steadily at it while the chips flew about him, and above him the spreading branches shivered at every stroke; or plodding slowly through still country roads beside his slow oxen; or, in the sultry summer days, swinging the scythe through thick grass and clover, mowing them down ankle deep at his feet. He had the flavor of all that about him. Now he had to wade through other than that fragrant summer sacrifice, to break through other ranks than serried clover and Mayweed, and those strong arms of his were to lay low something greater than pine or cedar. You could see that this thought was in his mind, that he never lost sight of it, but, also, that he would not shrink. Such men have not much to say; but in time of need they put into action the heroism which others exhale in glowing language.
This man had been looking straight before him; but at the sound of a childish voice he turned his head quickly. A little girl leaning from the curbstone was admiring the bunch of flowers on the soldier's bayonet, and stretching longing hands toward them.
The fixed look in the man's face broke up instantly. "Do you want them, little dear?" he asked.
"Oh! yes."
He lowered his rifle, removed the flowers, and gave them to the child, looking at her with a yearning, homesick smile that was more pitiful than tears. At that moment the drums began to beat. The soldier laid his bronzed hand on the happy little head, then, with trembling lips and downcast eyes, marched on, and out of sight for ever.