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[298]
for the night's work.
His gunnery had been superb during the evening and his blood was up.
I descended into a little valley and lost sight of the group, but heard Calloway's stern voice: “Sit down, Moore!
Your gun is well enough; the sharpshooting is not over yet. Get down!”
I rose the hill.
“One moment, Captain!
My trail's a hair's breadth too much to the right,” and the gunner bent eagerly over the hand-spike.
A sharp report and that unmistakable crash of a bullet against a man's head.
It was the last rifle shot on the lines that night.
The rushing together of the detachment obstructed my view; but as I came up the sergeant stepped aside and said, “See there, adjutant!”
Moore had fallen on the trail, the blood flowing from his wound all over his face.
His little brother was at his side instantly.
No wildness, no tumult of grief.
He knelt on the earth, and, lifting Allen's head on his knees, wiped the blood from his forehead with the cuff of his own tattered shirt-sleeve and kissed the pale face again and again, but very quietly.
Moore was evidently dead, and none of us cared to disturb the child.
Presently he rose,--quiet still, tearless still,--gazed down at his dead brother, then around at us, and breathing the saddest sigh I ever heard, said: “Well, I am alone in the world!”
The preacher-captain sprang to his side, and placing his hand on the poor lad's shoulder, said confidently: “No, my child; you are not alone, for the Bible says: ‘When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up;’ and Allen was both father and mother to you; besides, I am going to take you up, too; you shall sleep under my blanket to-night.”
There was not a dry eye in the group; and when, months afterwards, the whole battalion gathered on a quiet sabbath evening, on the banks of Swift Creek, to witness a baptism, and Calloway, at the water's edge, tenderly handed this child to the officiating minister, and receiving him again when the ceremony was over, threw a blanket about the little shivering form, carried him into a thicket, changed his clothing, and then reappeared, carrying the bundle of wet
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