The darkness that wrapped the wounded man dissolved gradually. The thunder and crash of guns, the mad cheers, the confusion of the bands withdrew farther and farther, and drifted away from his failing senses. He was back in his Southern home; the arm under his head was his mother's; and he murmured some boyish request. Jasmine and clematis oppressed him with their oversweetness; overhead the shining leaves of the magnolia swung with slow grace. So long since he had seen a magnolia, not since that evening--a life time ago, it seemed; the sight and fragrance fell on him as her cool touch did that last time. The heart throbs choked him then; he was choking again. 'Water, mother--a drink!' and something wet his lips and trickled down his throat, not cool and sweet as the rippling water he longed for, and he turned away with sickly fretfulness; but a new strength thrilled through his limbs. He opened his eyes; a face, battle-stained, but tear-wet like a woman's, bent over him. 'O Clement, dear old fellow, do you know me?' He smiled faintly, with stiffening lips. 'Yes, I know. I've prayed for it, George. I couldn't live to see her your wife. Good-by, dear boy. Tell mother--' He wandered again. 'Kiss me, mother--now Lois, my Marguerite. Into thy hands, O Lord--' A momentary struggle for breath, and then Morris laid back the grand head, and knelt, looking down on the beautiful face, over which the patient strength of perfect calm had settled forever. 'So that was it, after all,' he said, bitterly. 'Fool not to see; and he was worth a generation of such as I.' He turned away, tightened his saddle girths, cast a look on the pandemonium before him, looked back with one foot already in the stirrup. 'I sha'n't see him again in this hell, even if I come out of it myself.' And going back, with gentle fingers he removed the few trinkets on the body. In an inner pocket of the blouse he found a small packet. He opened it on the spot. A lady's handkerchief, silky fine, white as ever. No need of the delicate tracery in the corners to tell him whose. The perfume that haunted it still called back too vividly that evening when he had wondered at and loved her more for the strange, perfect calm that chilled a little his outburst of happiness. He folded it back carefully, touched his lips as a woman might have done to the cold forehead, and mounted, plunging up the hill to the fight that had recommenced over the trench. Later in the day, the ball that fate moulded for Captain George found him. He gave one low, pitiful cry as it crashed through his bridle arm, and then a merciful darkness closed about him.