“Ghosts, the ghosts of dead soldiers, marching with their heads bowed down the way tired soldiers march at night. And when one line passes, another trumpeter strikes up and another army of the same tired ghosts follows right after. It’s all mighty still--you never hear any sounds at all except the trumpet, and it’s muffled and choked--not even when the cavalry come along or the artillery. You know how moving guns rumble like thunder when they go along a hard road? Well, you never hear even the cannon, but the cavalry ride with their heads down, like the infantry, and the horses with their noses against their knees almost; and the artillerymen sit on the caissons with their arms folded and their heads bowed as though they were asleep. I can’t make out where they came from or where they are going; they just came out of nowhere and go nowhere--but they never stop coming. And the trumpeters blow back all the men that have ever died in battle since the world began--so that they are years and years passing by--that’s the way it seems in my dream. Then I’m all alone on the hill, and I know it’s my turn to sound the trumpet; and something clicks in my throat when I try to blow, and I can’t make a sound, and as I keep trying and trying I wake up; but I never can make them come. I can’t bring back my dead men out of the dust the way the others did, and I sit up and cry when I remember how I killed them.” He ceased as abruptly as he had begun, stared fixedly at Wayne and Joe and then slowly descended, muttering and shaking his head. When he was out of sight the two stood silently gazing after him. Wayne drew his hand across his forehead several times before he spoke. “Men live for things and they die for things. That poor old fellow has lost his mind brooding over the horror of war. They didn’t do it for themselves--the men who fought that war--they did it for the country, and for you and me who weren’t born. I wonder--I wonder how it would be to do something just once that was for somebody else?” Then he remembered what Jean had said to him in his father’s library, that we must serve ourselves before we attempt to serve others. He applied this to himself tentatively, wondering whether any philosophy was really applicable to his case. Joe spoke to him; he wanted to discuss the old soldier’s story, but Wayne did not heed him. He was looking dreamily down upon the tranquil landscape. Then he slapped his hands together as was his way when a new thought took hold of him. “Joe.” “Yes, sir.” “I wonder how it would seem to go to work.” “Well, there’s always your roost in the high buildin’ and buttons to press for the slaves,” suggested Joe cheerfully. “Don’t be a fool, Joe. I mean work--the kind that real men do, digging or planting, or any kind of thing that breaks your back and makes you dead tired--the workmen do who would do that----” and he levelled his arm toward the field where Pickett’s legion had charged through the hail-swept wheat field.