Ah, those many, many needless dead! That great soul whose beautiful body
is lying over yonder, so conspicuous against the sere hillside - could
it not have been spared the bitter consciousness of a vain devotion?
Would one exception have marred too much the pitiless perfection of the
divine, eternal plan?
A Horseman in the Sky
One sunny afternoon in the autumn of the year 1861, a soldier lay in a
clump of laurel by the side of a road in Western Virginia. He lay at
full length, upon his stomach, his feet resting upon the toes, his head
upon the left forearm. His extended right hand loosely grasped his
rifle. But for the somewhat methodical disposition of his limbs and a
slight rhythmic movement of the cartridge-box at the back of his belt,
he might have been thought to be dead. He was asleep at his post of
duty. But if detected he would be dead shortly afterward, that being the
just and legal penalty of his crime.
The clump of laurel in which the criminal lay was in the angle of a road
which, after, ascending, southward, a steep acclivity to that point,
turned sharply to the west, running along the summit for perhaps one
hundred yards.
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