He sat down again and ate everything in sight. The General and staff got busy at something else. Solomon gave the dying man another drink and began looking around like a huge bear-dog for a spot to roll up on, and sleep. He found it in the General’s blanket, his huge feet sticking out, bunion covered and black. They thought he was asleep and coming quietly back one by one, sat down, and were eating in silence when a shock of hair blurred up out of the blanket: “Say, Mister-men, but ain’t war hell sho’ nuff? But tell the boys not to shoot ther Innards out—’taint fair.” Then he slept. The General waited till he heard him snoring: “Major, if you happen to lose him to-morrow in the first skirmish—really, I don’t think we need him, Major?” The Major was sure they did not—so were the others. They made the dying man as comfortable as they could, the General sparing his own warm rain-coat for the limbs now rapidly chilling. But his groans kept them awake: “Water—water—oh, God—water and death—kill me, somebody!” The cry fell out of the silence with the starlight, mingling strangely with the shivering wail of a screech owl—so uncannily mingling that they seemed as one. It was nearly midnight when the General saw the foot withdrawn, the big form arise and slouch over to the dying man: “Water—water—and, oh, for God’s sake—have mercy and kill me.” Solomon tenderly lifted the gasping lips to the canteen: “Do yo’ means it—want me to kill ye sho’ nuff, brother?” The man’s eyes were beseeching as he gasped: “I——can’t——live——death every——minute——put me——out of misery—God will——reward you.” Solomon’s eyes were wet with tears. His great pitying heart thumped loudly: “How, brother? Whut with?” The dying man nodded at a bayonetted rifle near by: “That——push that——through my heart——quick!” The General arose just in time. Solomon, with a strange sob in his throat, stood over the man, the gun poised, the bayonet’s point— “My God, Solomon!”—and he grasped the descending gun by the barrel. “This is murder—I’ll have you shot!” The giant turned on him astonished: “He cyant live—you-uns shot him to pieces. That’s war. I put him out o’ his misery—that’s murder. Strange—strange! Brother,” he stooped and whispered regretfully to the man, who beseeched him with fixed, unwinking eyes, “Brother, I’d do it—God knows I’d like ter ’commodate yer, but ye heurn yo’self.” Still lower: “But say, brother, ef you fin’ ye cyant stan’ it no longer—when they sleep—call Solomon—an’ I’ll sho’ ’commodate you in this. God bless ye.” Later there was a rigid stiffening and gasps among the leaves and Solomon knew there was no need for his bayonet.