There were many desertions to the enemy about that time. The war was manifestly drawing to a close, and men who lacked self-sacrificing devotion were getting tired of its hardships and privations. In order to stop these desertions, orders had been issued that any soldier arresting another in the act of going to the enemy should have a thirty days’ furlough. Youngblood was on picket one day with another man. He proposed to that other man that they both should desert, and they started together toward the enemy’s lines. According to Youngblood’s story, it was his purpose to arrest his comrade, and thus earn a furlough at the expense of the other fellow’s life. Whether this story was true or not doesn’t much matter. The other fellow arrested him. In any case, he deserved to pay the penalty he did. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced. The sentence was approved by all the authorities, including the war department. This morning it was to be carried out. It was about ten o’clock, Youngblood’s regiment was formed into three sides of a hollow square. Near the entrance to the square, on the right, rested Youngblood’s coffin. Beside it was Youngblood’s grave. Presently an ambulance drove up, bearing the prisoner and his attendant guards. As he stepped lightly and lithely from the ambulance, we saw him to be a fine specimen of young manhood. He was twenty-three or twenty-four years of age; tall, well built, and full of elastic vigor. He was handsome, too, and of refined and gentle countenance. There was no sign of flinching in him: nothing that denoted the coward which his explanation of his crime had shown him to be. It seemed something more than a pity to put a fellow like that to death. He took his place in front of the guards and just in rear of the band, and the dead march began. He walked alone. Slowly, and with cadenced step, the procession moved around inside the square. And as it passed me, I was curious to observe the condemned man’s behavior. His step was as steady and as firm as that of any man in the guard. I looked at his hands to see if there were any convulsive clutching of the fingers. There was none. I doubt if any man in all that regiment felt so calm in mind or so well poised in nerve as Youngblood looked. Having completed the seemingly endless march around the three closed sides of the square, the procession turned to the right, and crossed its open end to the point of execution. There an officer stepped forward and read to Youngblood the findings and sentence of the court which had condemned him, with the formal endorsements approving them and ordering the sentence executed. The guard which had the prisoner in charge divided to the right and left, and Youngblood was left standing alone in front of his coffin, and beside his open grave.