The sun was low and red in the west; the level rays projected from the trunk of each giant pine a wall of shadow traversing the golden haze to eastward until light and shade were blended in undistinguishable blue.

Private Grayrock rose to his feet, looked cautiously about him, shouldered his rifle and set off toward camp.  He had gone perhaps a half-mile, and was passing a thicket of laurel, when a bird rose from the midst of it and perching on the branch of a tree above, poured from its joyous breast so inexhaustible floods of song as but one of all God’s creatures can utter in His praise.  There was little in that—­it was only to open the bill and breathe; yet the man stopped as if struck —­stopped and let fall his rifle, looked upward at the bird, covered his eyes with his hands and wept like a child!  For the moment he was, indeed, a child, in spirit and in memory, dwelling again by the great river, over-against the Enchanted Land!  Then with an effort of the will he pulled himself together, picked up his weapon and audibly damning himself for an idiot strode on.  Passing an opening that reached into the heart of the little thicket he looked in, and there, supine upon the earth, its arms all abroad, its gray uniform stained with a single spot of blood upon the breast, its white face turned sharply upward and backward, lay the image of himself!—­the body of John Grayrock, dead of a gunshot wound, and still warm!  He had found his man.

As the unfortunate soldier knelt beside that masterwork of civil war the shrilling bird upon the bough overhead stilled her song and, flushed with sunset’s crimson glory, glided silently away through the solemn spaces of the wood.  At roll-call that evening in the Federal camp the name William Grayrock brought no response, nor ever again there-after.

CIVILIANS

THE MAN OUT OF THE NOSE

At the intersection of two certain streets in that part of San Francisco known by the rather loosely applied name of North Beach, is a vacant lot, which is rather more nearly level than is usually the case with lots, vacant or otherwise, in that region.  Immediately at the back of it, to the south, however, the ground slopes steeply upward, the acclivity broken by three terraces cut into the soft rock.  It is a place for goats and poor persons, several families of each class having occupied it jointly and amicably “from the foundation of the city.”  One of the humble habitations of the lowest terrace is noticeable for its rude resemblance to the human face, or rather to such a simulacrum of it as a boy might cut out of a hollowed pumpkin, meaning no offense to his race.  The eyes are two circular windows, the nose is a door, the mouth an aperture caused by removal of a board below.  There are no doorsteps.  As a face, this house is too large; as a dwelling, too small.  The blank, unmeaning stare of its lidless and browless eyes is uncanny.