The Last Three Soldiers

by W. H. Shelton

Such evidences of a profound absence of mind were constantly occurring; and if they were not indications of his desire to return to the world, his secret observations with the telescope made it plain enough that he was absorbed in events outside the borders of Sherman Territory. If questioned, he assigned all sorts of imaginary reasons for his conduct, and at the same time he held himself more and more aloof from his companions, to wander about the plateau alone.

During the previous winter, Philip had reported that one of the four young girls removed by the Confederates at the time of the capture of the officers had reappeared in the vicinity of the burned house. This fact was soon forgotten by Coleman and Bromley, who were working like beavers, pecking the stones for the mill; but to Philip it was an event of absorbing interest. Where were the others? What sufferings and what indignities had the returned wanderer endured in her long absence, and what hardships and dangers had not she braved to reach her native valley again? Gentle as Philip's nature was, he possessed in a marked degree the power to love and the hunger to be loved in return. Occasionally a man in a dungeon or on a desert island, or in the shadow of a scaffold, has devoted himself to a one-sided passion in circumstances as baffling as those that hedged in Philip.

The sight of this lonely girl wandering back to the blackened ruin in the deserted clearing furnished the dolorous lady his knightly fancy craved. A speck in the distance, he drew her to his arms in the magic lens, and consoled her with such words of sympathy and endearment as his fancy prompted. In short, he had the old disease that makes a princess out of a poor girl in cow-skin shoes and a homespun frock, and had it all the worse that she kept her distance, as this one did. In the long days when storms interrupted his observations, or fog hung over the valley, he wrote tender letters to his princess on prepared leaves of his prayer-book, in which the grave responses of the Litany ran in faint lines, like a water-mark, under the burning words on the paper.

He watched Jones and the kindly neighbors (not including Shifless) clearing away the wreckage and rebuilding the Smith house between the sturdy stone chimneys. The new cabin was divided by an open covered passage, through which Philip could look with the glass to the sunlit field beyond, and watch the Princess Smith entering either of the doors opposite to each other in the sides of the passage.

This love of Philip's had sprung into being full fledged, without any stage of infant growth like an ordinary passion. Besides its unsuspecting object, it was ample enough to take under its wings her wandering kinsfolk, dead or alive, and included the cow with the soundless bell which came to be milked in the evening by the hands of the princess herself, and then to crop the grass and lie in the dust of the road until morning.

From the time when she waved him a banner of smoke at sunrise until the firelight reddened on the cabin window, Philip came to linger almost constantly on the rocks, to the neglect of his share in the labors of the little community. When planting-time came, and hands were in demand to spade up the soil, his companions for the first time secured and hid away the telescope. For a day—for two days—Philip was uneasy, going and coming by himself, doing no work, speaking to no one, scarcely partaking of food. At last the suspense and disappointment became unendurable, and going to Lieutenant Coleman, resting from his work in the shade of a spreading chestnut, he threw himself at his feet and begged for the return of the telescope, revealing for the first time the nature of his infatuation. His lips once opened, poor Philip ran on in a rhapsody so fantastic and incoherent that the diseased state of his mind was at the same time made apparent.

In the diary for July 6, Lieutenant Coleman writes:

"An unspeakable calamity has fallen on the dwellers in Sherman Territory. Reason has been blotted out in the mind of our companion Philip, and now we are but two in the company of an amiable madman."

In view of Philip's malady Lieutenant Coleman felt it wise to humor him with the telescope, and to try the effect of more active sympathy by joining him in his observations.

After an eager examination of the clearing in the valley, "Gone! Gone!" he cried in a voice of despair. "You have driven away my princess! You hate her—you and the other one! You hate me! I'm not wise enough for your company—you and the other one. Give me back my princess—give me back—"