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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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come in behint 'em." "Oh, hush, with your comin' in behint 'em. I've seen all 'a that I wanta. Don't tell me about comin' in behint--" "Bill Smithers, he ses he'd rather been in ten hundred battles than been in that heluva hospital. He ses they got shootin' in th' night- time, an' shells dropped plum among 'em in th' hospital. He ses sech hollerin' he never see." "Hasbrouck? He's th' best off'cer in this here reg'ment. He's a whale." "Didn't I tell yeh we'd come aroun' in behint 'em? Didn't I tell yeh so? We--" "Oh, shet yeh mouth!" For a time this pursuing recollection of the tattered man took all elation from the youth's veins. He saw his vivid error, and he was afraid that it would stand before him all his life. He took no share in the chatter of his comrades, nor did he look at them or know them, save when he felt sudden suspicion that they were seeing his thoughts and scrutinizing each detail of the scene with the tattered soldier. Yet gradually he mustered force to put the sin at a distance. And at last his eyes seemed to open to some new ways. He found that he could look back upon the brass and bombast of his earlier gospels and see them truly. He was gleeful when he discovered that he now despised them. With this conviction came a store of assur- ance. He felt a quiet manhood, nonassertive but of sturdy and strong blood. He knew that he would no more quail before his guides wher- ever they should point. He had been to touch the great death, and found that, after all, it was but the great death. He was a man. |
