“No doubt but you are both, John; yet how came you to go to war, if you felt so?  Wasn’t enlisting as bad as marrying?”

“No, ma’am, not as I see it, for one is helping my neighbor, the other pleasing myself.  I went because I couldn’t help it.  I didn’t want the glory or the pay; I wanted the right thing done, and people kept saying the men who were in earnest ought to flight.  I was in earnest, the Lord knows! but I held off as long as I could, not knowing which was my duty; mother saw the case, gave me her ring to keep me steady, and said ‘Go;’ so I went.”

A short story and a simple one, but the man and the mother were portrayed better than pages of fine writing could have done it.

“Do you ever regret that you came, when you lie here suffering so much?”

“Never ma’am; I haven’t helped a great deal, but I’ve shown I was willing to give my life, and perhaps I’ve got to; but I don’t blame anybody, and if it was to do over again, I’d do it.  I’m a little sorry I wasn’t wounded in front; it looks cowardly to be hit in the back, but I obeyed orders, and it doesn’t matter in the end, I know.”

Poor John! it did not matter now, except that a shot in front might have spared the long agony in store for him.  He seemed to read the thought that troubled me, as he spoke so hopefully when there was no hope, for he suddenly added,—­

“This is my first battle; do they think it’s going to be my last?”

“I’m afraid they do, John.”

It was the hardest question I had ever been called upon to answer; doubly hard with those clear eyes fixed on mine, forcing a truthful answer by their own truth.  He seemed a little startled at first, pondered over the fateful fact a moment, then shook his head, with a glance at the broad chest and muscular limbs stretched out before him:—­

“I’m not afraid, but it’s difficult to believe all at once.  I’m so strong it don’t seem possible for such a little wound to kill me.”

Merry Mercutio’s dying words glanced through my memory as he spoke:—­“’Tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but ’tis enough.”  And John would have said the same, could he have seen the ominous black holes between his shoulders, he never had; and, seeing the ghastly sights about him, could not believe his own wound more fatal than these, for all the suffering it caused him.

“Shall I write to your mother, now?” I asked, thinking that these sudden tidings might change all plans and purposes; but they did not; for the man received the order of the Divine Commander to march, with the same unquestioning obedience with which the soldier had received that of the human one, doubtless remembering that the first led him to life, and the last to death.

“No, ma’am; to Laurie just the same; he’ll break it to her best, and I’ll add a line to her myself when you get done.”