Sally Dows | Page 5

over the
officer's face; he was about to hand the articles to a sergeant, but
changed his mind and put them in his pocket.
Meantime the lane and woods beyond, and even the slope itself, were
crowding with supports and waiting troops. His own battery was still
unlimbered, waiting orders. There was a slight commotion in the lane.

"Very well done, captain. Smartly taken and gallantly held."
It was the voice of a general officer passing with his staff. There was a
note of pleasant relief in its tone, and the middle- aged, care-drawn face
of its owner was relaxed in a paternal smile. The young captain flushed
with pleasure.
"And you seem to have had close work too," added the general,
pointing to the dead man.
The young officer hurriedly explained. The general nodded, saluted,
and passed on. But a youthful aide airily lingered.
"The old man's feeling good, Courtland," he said. "We've rolled 'em up
all along the line. It's all over now. In point of fact, I reckon you've
fired the last round in this particular fratricidal engagement."
The last round! Courtland remained silent, looking abstractedly at the
man it had crushed and broken at his feet.
"And I shouldn't wonder if you got your gold-leaf for to-day's work.
But who's your sunny Southern friend here?" he added, following his
companion's eyes.
Courtland repeated his story a little more seriously, which, however,
failed to subdue the young aide's levity. "So he concluded to stop over,"
he interrupted cheerfully. "But," looking at the letter and photograph, "I
say--look here! 'Sally Dows?' Why, there was another man picked up
yesterday with a letter to the same girl! Doc Murphy has it. And, by
Jove! the same picture too!--eh? I say, Sally must have gathered in the
boys, and raked down the whole pile! Look here, Courty! you might get
Doc Murphy's letter and hunt her up when this cruel war is over. Say
you're 'fulfilling a sacred trust!' See? Good idea, old man! Ta-ta!" and
he trotted quickly after his superior.
Courtland remained with the letter and photograph in his hand, gazing
abstractedly after him. The smoke had rolled quite away from the fields
on the left, but still hung heavily down the south on the heels of the

flying cavalry. A long bugle call swelled up musically from below. The
freed sun caught the white flags of two field hospitals in the woods and
glanced tranquilly on the broad, cypress-fringed, lazy-flowing, and
cruel but beautiful Southern river, which had all unseen crept so
smilingly that morning through the very heart of the battle.
CHAPTER I.
The two o'clock express from Redlands to Forestville, Georgia, had
been proceeding with the languid placidity of the river whose banks it
skirted for more than two hours. But, unlike the river, it had stopped
frequently; sometimes at recognized stations and villages, sometimes at
the apparition of straw-hatted and linen-coated natives in the solitude of
pine woods, where, after a decent interval of cheery conversation with
the conductor and engineer, it either took the stranger on board, or
relieved him of his parcel, letter, basket, or even the verbal message
with which he was charged. Much of the way lay through pine-barren
and swampy woods which had never been cleared or cultivated; much
through decayed settlements and ruined villages that had remained
unchanged since the War of the Rebellion, now three years past. There
were vestiges of the severity of a former military occupation; the
blackened timbers of railway bridges still unrepaired; and along the line
of a certain memorable march, sections of iron rails taken from the
torn-up track, roasted in bonfires and bent while red-hot around the
trunks of trees, were still to be seen. These mementos of defeat seemed
to excite neither revenge nor the energy to remove them; the dull
apathy which had succeeded the days of hysterical passion and
convulsion still lingered; even the slow improvement that could be
detected was marked by the languor of convalescence. The helplessness
of a race, hitherto dependent upon certain barbaric conditions or
political place and power, unskilled in invention, and suddenly
confronted with the necessity of personal labor, was visible everywhere.
Eyes that but three short years before had turned vindictively to the
North, now gazed wistfully to that quarter for help and direction. They
scanned eagerly the faces of their energetic and prosperous
neighbors--and quondam foes--upon the verandas of Southern hotels
and the decks of Southern steamboats, and were even now watching

from a group in the woods the windows of the halted train, where the
faces appeared of two men of manifestly different types, but still alien
to the country in dress, features, and accent.
Two negroes were slowly loading the engine tender from a woodpile.
The rich brown smoke of the