"Do you think there will be fighting here?" "I don't know," he said. She motioned him to a veranda chair, then seated herself. "What shall we do?" she asked calmly. "I am not alarmed--but my grandfather is bedridden, and my brother is a child. Is it safe to stay?" The bandmaster looked at her helplessly. "I don't know," he repeated--"I don't know what to say. Nobody seems to understand what is happening; we in the regiment are never told anything; we know nothing except what passes under our eyes." He broke off suddenly; the situation, her loneliness, the impending danger, appalled him. "May I ask a little favor?" she said, rising. "Would you mind coming in a moment to see my grandfather?" He stood up obediently, sheathed sabre in his left hand; she led the way across the hall and up the stairs, opened the door, and motioned toward the bed. At first he saw nothing save the pillows and snowy spread. "Will you speak to him?" she whispered. He approached the bed, cap in hand. "He is very old," she said; "he was a soldier of Washington. He desires to see a soldier of the Union." And now the bandmaster perceived the occupant of the bed, a palsied, bloodless phantom of the past--an inert, bedridden, bony thing that looked dead until its deep eyes opened and fixed themselves on him. "This is a Union soldier, grandfather," she said, kneeling on the floor beside him. And to the bandmaster she said in a low voice: "Would you mind taking his hand? He cannot move." The bandmaster bent stiffly above the bed and took the old man's hand in his. The sunlit room trembled in the cannonade. "That is all," said the girl simply. She took the fleshless hand, kissed it, and laid it on the bedspread. "A soldier of Washington," she said dreamily. "I am glad he has seen you--I think he understands: but he is very, very old." She lingered a moment to touch the white hair with her hand; the bandmaster stepped back to let her pass, then put on his cap, hooked his sabre, turned squarely toward the bed and saluted. The phantom watched him as a dying eagle watches; then the slim hand of the granddaughter fell on the bandmaster's arm, and he turned and clanked out into the open air. The boy stood waiting for them, and as they appeared, he caught their hands in each of his, talking all the while and walking with them to the gateway, where pony and charger stood, nose to nose under the trees. "If you need anybody to dash about carrying dispatches," the boy ran on, "why, I'll do it for you. My father was a soldier, and I'm going to be one, and I----" "Billy," said the bandmaster abruptly, "when we charge, go up on that hill and watch us. If we don't come back, you must be ready to act a man's part. Your sister counts on you."