At the close of some battle or skirmish, a
wounded Union soldier had crept on hands and knees to his feet, and
besought his assistance,--not dreaming that any creature in human shape,
in the Christian land where they had so recently been brethren, could
refuse it. But this man (this fiend, if you prefer to call him so,
though I would not advise it) flung a bitter curse at the poor
Northerner, and absolutely trampled the soul out of his body, as he lay
writhing beneath his feet. The fellow's face was horribly ugly; but I am
not quite sure that I should have noticed it if I had not known his
story. He spoke not a word, and met nobody's eye, but kept staring
upward into the smoky vacancy towards the ceiling, where, it might be, he
beheld a continual portraiture of his victim's horror-stricken agonies.
I rather fancy, however, that his moral sense was yet too torpid to
trouble him with such remorseful visions, and that, for his own part, he
might have had very agreeable reminiscences of the soldier's death, if
other eyes had not been bent reproachfully upon him and warned him that
something was amiss. It was this reproach in other men's eyes that made
him look aside.
Pages:
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172