Yet it was not you who burned the nest of the poor old man. Nor even your regiment. Nor had _you_ helped to hound the South to revolution by threats and contumely. ’Twas John Brown dissolved the Union. You hated him and his work, for you loved your whole country,—you and your father, who bade you good-by, the other day, with averted face. And now you must die that that work may be undone. You and half a million more of your people. The South salutes your memory! Ah, the moon is rising now. Ribbons of light stealing through the trees lie across his path, and yonder, at the farther end of it, the Queen of Night pours a flood of soft effulgence through a rift in the wood. The young soldier stood in the midst of it, bathed in a glorious plenitude of peaceful light. Such perfect stillness! Can this be war, thought he? He could hear the ticking of his watch upon his heart. But the click! click! beneath that dark old oak,—that he did not hear. And that barrel that glitters grimly even in the shadow,—he sees it not. The tear-stains are upon it still; but the tears are dried and gone. Click! click! The muzzle rises slowly; butt and shoulder meet. A head bends low; a left eye closes; the right, brown as a hawk’s and as fierce, glares, from beneath corrugated brow, along a barrel that rests as though in a grip of steel. The keen report of a sporting rifle—not loud, but crisp and clear—rings through the silent wood, and there is a heavy fall and a groan. And the placid moon, serene mocker of mortals and their woes, floated upward and upward, and on and on. On and on, supremely tranquil, over other scenes, whether of love or hate. Ah, can it be true that we poor men have no friend anywhere in the heavens above, as some would have us believe? or the ever-peaceful gods, dwellers upon Olympus, have they in very deed forgotten us? 34. “Where’s your game, grandpa?” asked the young soldier. “We have been sitting up waiting for you and your rabbit.” “There are two kinds of game,” replied the old man, warming his hands before the fire; “one sort you bring home, the other kind you send home.” “What! did you shoot a Yankee? One of the boys thought he heard the crack of a rifle.” “’Twas old Betsey,” replied he, patting her cheek, as it were. “We whacked one of ’em. _He_ won’t set fire to any more houses, I reckon.”