The Brigade Commander | Page 5

and thoroughly commonplace work,
without a prospect of adventure, and much less of danger. The
explanation of this calmness, so brutal perhaps to the eye of a sensitive
soul, lies mainly in the fact that they were all veterans, the survivors of
marches, privations, maladies, sieges, and battles. Not a regiment
present numbered four hundred men, and the average was not above
three hundred. The whole force, including artillery and cavalry, might
have been about twenty-five hundred sabres and bayonets.
At the beginning of the march Waldron fell into the rear of his staff and
mounted orderlies. Then the boy who had fled from Fitz Hugh dropped
out of the tramping escort, and rode up to his side.
"Well, Charlie," said Waldron, casting a pitying glance at the yet pallid
face and anxious eyes of the youth, "you have had a sad fright. I make

you very miserable."
"He has found us at last," murmured Charlie in a tremulous soprano
voice. "What did he say?"
"We are to talk to-morrow. He acts as my aide-de-camp to-day. I ought
to tell you frankly that he is not friendly."
"Of course, I knew it," sighed Charlie, while the tears fell.
"It is only one more trouble--one more danger, and perhaps it may pass.
So many have passed."
"Did you tell him anything to quiet him? Did you tell him that we were
married?"
"But we are not married yet, Charlie. We shall be, I hope."
"But you ought to have told him that we were. It might stop him from
doing something--mad. Why didn't you tell him so? Why didn't you
think of it?"
"My dear little child, we are about to have a battle. I should like to
carry some honor and truth into it."
"Where is he?" continued Charlie, unconvinced and unappeased. "I
want to see him. Is he at the head of the column? I want to speak to him,
just one word. He won't hurt me."
She suddenly spurred her horse, wheeled into the fields, and dashed
onward. Fitz Hugh was lounging in his saddle, and sombrely surveying
the passing column, when she galloped up to him.
"Carrol!" she said, in a choked voice, reining in by his side, and leaning
forward to touch his sleeve.
He threw one glance at her--a glance of aversion, if not of downright
hatred, and turned his back in silence.

"He is my husband, Carrol," she went on rapidly. "I knew you didn't
understand it. I ought to have written you about it. I thought I would
come and tell you before you did anything absurd. We were married as
soon as he heard that his wife was dead."
"What is the use of this?" he muttered hoarsely. "She is not dead. I
heard from her a week ago. She was living a week ago."
"Oh, Carrol!" stammered Charlie. "It was some mistake then. Is it
possible! And he was so sure! But he can get a divorce, you know. She
abandoned him. Or she can get one. No, he can get it--of course, when
she abandoned him. But, Carrol, she must be dead--he was so sure."
"She is not dead, I tell you. And there can be no divorce. Insanity bars
all claim to a divorce. She is in an asylum. She had to leave him, and
then she went mad."
"Oh, no, Carrol, it is all a mistake; it is not so. Carrol," she murmured
in a voice so faint that he could not help glancing at her, half in fury
and half in pity. She was slowly falling from her horse. He sprang from
his saddle, caught her in his arms, and laid her on the turf, wishing the
while that it covered her grave. Just then one of Waldron's orderlies
rode up and exclaimed: "What is the matter with the--the boy? Hullo,
Charlie."
Fitz Hugh stared at the man in silence, tempted to tear him from his
horse. "The boy is ill," he answered when he recovered his
self-command. "Take charge of him yourself." He remounted, rode
onward out of sight beyond a thicket, and there waited for the brigade
commander, now and then fingering his revolver. As Charlie was being
placed in an ambulance by the orderly and a sergeant's wife, Waldron
came up, reined in his horse violently, and asked in a furious voice, "Is
that boy hurt?
"Ah--fainted," he added immediately. "Thank you, Mrs. Gunner. Take
good care of him--the best of care, my dear woman, and don't let him
leave you all day."

Further on, when Fitz Hugh silently fell into his escort, he merely
glanced at him in a furtive way, and then cantered on rapidly to the
head of the cavalry. There he beckoned to the tall, grave, iron-gray
Chaplain of the Tenth, and rode