White as the winter snow one boyish face gleamed amid the excited throng; the fair hair pushed back from the girlish forehead, and the scorching sun falling upon the unsheltered head, for Isaac’s cap had been shot away, and the ball which shot it lay swimming in the dark life blood of poor Harry Baker, just behind, and _just two inches taller_ than the widow’s youngest born. Poor Harry! He had done his best to keep the promise made so boastfully. In all the 13th Regiment there was not one who played a braver part than he, firing off with every gun a timely joke, which raised a smile even in that dreadful hour. But Harry’s work was done, and Mrs. Baker had but one boy now, for her first-born lay upon the ground so blackened and disfigured, with the thick brains slowly oozing from his mangled head, and the purple gore pouring from his lips, that only those who saw him fall, could guess that it was Harry. Poor Harry! We say it again, sadly, reverently, for rude and reckless though he was, he fell fighting for his country; and to all who perish thus we owe a debt of gratitude, a meed of praise. Sacred, then, be the memory of those whose graves are with the slain, far away beneath Virginia’s sky, and sacred be the memory of poor Harry Baker. His own worst enemy, he lived his life’s brief span, and died at last a soldier’s death. * * * * * “Shot plump through the upper story! Won’t the old woman row it, though?” was Bill’s characteristic comment, as the whizzing and the death shriek met his ear, and the falling, bleeding figure met his view. Spite of his jeering words there was a keen pang in Billy’s heart as he shrank away from the gory mass he knew had been his brother,—a sudden upheaving of something in his throat and a blur before his vision, as he began to realize what it was to go to war. But there was then no time to waste over a fallen brother. The dread work must go on, and with the whispered words, “Poor Hal, I’ll do the tender for you when we get the varments licked,” he marked the position by signs he could not miss, and then pressed closer to his comrade, saying, as he did so— “Ike, Hal’s a goner. Shot right through his top-knot, with a piece of your cap wedged in his skull. If you’d been a leetle taller you’d been scalped instead of Hal. So much you get for bein’ ‘Stub.’”