“My God!” he exclaimed, “it’s Peter Lamb.”  He moved away and lay down well hidden in the brush.  It was a very simple mind which considered this meeting with the only being the black man hated.  The unusual never appealed to him as it would have done to a more imaginative person.  The coming thus on his enemy was only what he had angrily predicted when he had Peter in his power and had said to him that some day God would punish him.  It had come true.

The men who had arrested Peter and were near enough to hear the brief sentence, understood it, and being eagerly questioned soon spread among the moving ranks the story of the crime and this unexampled punishment.  It was plain to Josiah, but what was to follow he did not know, as he rose, lingered about, and following the Provost’s party considered the wonderful fact of his fulfilled prediction.  The coincidence of being himself present did not cause the surprise which what we call coincidences awaken in minds which crave explanations of the uncommon.  It was just what was sure to happen somehow, some day, when God settled Josiah’s personal account with a wicked man.  He had, however, an urgent curiosity to see how it would end and a remainder of far-descended savagery in the wish to let his one enemy know that he was a witness of his punishment.  Thinking thus, Josiah went through the wayside scrub to see how the guard would dispose of their prisoner.

The man who had sinned was presently tied to a tree facing the road.  His hands were securely tied behind it, and his feet as rudely dealt with.  He said no word as they pinned the label on his breast.  Then the two guards sat down between Peter and the roadway.  Men of the passing brigades asked them questions.  They replied briefly and smoked with entire unconcern as to their prisoner, or speculated in regard to what the Rebs would say or do to him.  The mosquitoes tormented him, and once he shuddered when one of the guards guessed that perhaps the girl would come back and see him tied up.  The story of Grant’s unusual punishment was told over and over to men as the regiments went by.  Now and then soldiers left the ranks to read the sentence of what must mean death.  Some as they read were as silent as the doomed wretch; others laughed or cursed him for dishonouring the army in which this one crime was almost unknown.  A sergeant tore the corps mark from his coat, and still he said no word.  The long-drawn array went on and on; the evening shadows lengthened; miles of wagon trains rumbled by; whips cracked over mules; the cavalry guard bringing up the rear was lost in the dust left by tramping thousands; the setting sun shone through it ruddy; and last came the squadron net of the Provost-marshal gathering in the stragglers.  Tired men were helped by a grip on the stirrup leather.  The lazy loiterers were urged forward with language unquotable, the mildest being “darned coffee-coolers.”  At last, all had gone.

Josiah rose from his hiding place and listened as the clank of steel and the sound of hurried horsemen died away.  No other noises broke the twilight stillness.  He walked back to the roadside, and stood before the pinioned and now lonely man.  “You’re caught at last, Peter Lamb.”