“The parade came to the ‘shoulder’ as the little column, wheeling to its right after clearing the flank by which it had entered the square, began its slow, solemn progress along the front of the left face. I felt the throbbing strains of the Dead March becoming actual torture to me long before the procession, moving in its measured march along the successive faces, had reached the front of the centre, where stood the regiment to which the prisoner and myself belonged. ‘Steady, men!’ shouted the colonel hoarsely, as he felt rather than heard or saw the involuntary shiver that ran along the ranks as the firm, pale face slowly passed. With an upward glance at the chief, the poor fellow straightened himself and set his shoulders more square, as if he took his officer’s word of command to include him also. His chum broke into noisy weeping, and a young officer swooned, but the doomed man strode steadily on, without the quiver of a muscle of his set face. “At length the long, cruel progress was completed, and the head of the procession drew off to the centre of the unoccupied fourth face of the square; the coffin-bearers laid down their burden there and retired, and Sergeant Russell drew up his firing party into two ranks fronting toward the coffin, at a distance of about thirty paces. The band ceased its sombre music and wheeled aside. The prisoner, accompanied still by the clergyman, marched steadily up to his coffin, on which the two knelt down. “The clergyman’s ministrations were almost immediately interrupted. At a signal from the general the judge-advocate rode out from the staff, and, moving forward to the flank of the firing party, read in sonorous tones the warrant for the condemned soldier’s execution. Universal admiration and compassion were stirred by the soldierly bearing of the man as he listened to the official authorisation of his doom. As the judge-advocate approached he had risen from the kneeling position, doffed his cap, and sprung smartly to ‘attention,’ retaining that attitude until the end, when he saluted respectfully and knelt down again as the minister rejoined him. There was a short interval of prayer; then the judge-advocate beckoned to the chaplain to retire, and the soldier remained alone, kneeling on his coffin-lid there, face to face with imminent death in the midst of the strained and painful silence.