“Can you account for it, Tom?” asked John.

“No, but he ought to take dad’s advice and see Professor Askew.  It makes him furious.  Oh! if we were all at home again, Mr. Rivers—­and out of this row.  You are limping, John—­what’s wrong?  Let me see that leg.”

“No, you don’t,” cried John merrily.  “You promised to get even with me after our famous battle—­I don’t trust you.  I bruised my knee—­that’s all.”

“Well, I can wait.”

They talked of home, of the village and its people, and at their meal of the way they proposed to conduct the spring campaign.  Many bloodless battles were thus fought over mess-tables and around camp-fires.

“For my part,” said John, “I want to get done with this mole business and do anything in the open—­Oh, here comes Blake!  You know our clergyman from home, the Rev. Mr. Rivers?  No!  Well, then I make you the Christmas gift of a pleasant acquaintance.  Sit down, there is some turkey left and plum-pudding.”

“Glad to see you, McGregor,” said Blake.  “I know Mr. Rivers by sight—­oh, and well, too—­he was back of the line in that horrid mix-up at the Bloody Angle—­he was with the stretcher-bearers.”

“Where,” said McGregor, “he had no business to be.”

Rivers laughed as he rarely did.  “It may seem strange to you all, but I am never so happy”—­he came near to saying so little unhappy—­“as when I am among the dying and the wounded, even if the firing is heavy.”

Blake looked at the large-featured face and the eyes that, as old McGregor said, were so kindly and so like mysterious jewels as they seemed to radiate the light that came from within.  His moment of critical doubt passed, and he felt the strange attractiveness which Rivers had for men and the influential trust he surely won.

“I prefer,” remarked McGregor, “to operate when bullets are not flying.”

“But you do not think of them then,” returned Rivers, “I am sure you do not.”

“No, I do not, but they seem to be too attentive at times.  I lost a little finger-tip back of Round Top.  We had thirteen surgeons killed or wounded that day.  The Rebs left eighty surgeons with their wounded.  We sent them home after we got up enough help from the cities.”

“It was not done always,” said Penhallow.  “More’s the pity.”

“We had Grant at the hospital yesterday,” said the doctor.  “He comes often.”

“Did you notice his face?” queried Rivers.

“The face?  Not particularly—­why?”

“He has two deep lines between the eyes, and crossing them two lateral furrows on the forehead.  In Sicily they call it the ’cross of misfortune.’”

“Then it has yet to come,” said Blake.

“Late or early,” said Rivers, “they assure you it will come.  Some men find their calamities when young, some when they are old, which is better.”

“Let us be thankful that we have no choice,” said Blake.