Can Such Things Be [45]
Be good enough to tell me the colour of their clothing, which I was unable to make out, and I'll trouble you no more.' 'You are quite sure that you saw them?' 'Sure? My God, sir, I could have counted them!' 'Why, really,' said the physician, with an amusing consciousness of his own resemblance to the loqua- cious barber of the Arabian Nights, 'this is very in- teresting. I met no troops.' The man looked at him coldly, as if he had himself observed the likeness to the barber. 'It is plain,' he said, 'that you do not care to assist me. Sir, you may go to the devil!' He turned and strode away, very much at ran- dom, across the dewy fields, his half-penitent tor- mentor quietly watching him from his point of van- tage in the saddle till he disappeared beyond an array of trees.
3: The Danger of Looking into a Pool of Water
After leaving the road the man slackened his pace, and now went forward, rather deviously, with a dis- tinct feeling of fatigue. He could not account for this, though truly the interminable loquacity of that country doctor offered itself in explanation. Seating himself upon a rock, he laid one hand upon his knee, back upward, and casually looked at it. It was lean and withered. He lifted both hands to his face. It was seamed and furrowed; he could trace the lines with the tips of his fingers. How strange!--a mere bullet-stroke and a brief unconsciousness should not make one a physical wreck. 'I must have been a long time in hospital,' he said aloud. 'Why, what a fool I am! The battle was in December, and it is now summer!' He laughed. 'No wonder that fellow thought me an escaped luna- tic. He was wrong: I am only an escaped patient.' At a little distance a small plot of ground enclosed by a stone wall caught his attention. With no very definite intent he rose and went to it. In the centre was a square, solid monument of hewn stone. It was brown with age, weather-worn at the angles, spotted with moss and lichen. Between the massive blocks were strips of grass the leverage of whose roots had pushed them apart. In answer to the challenge of this ambitious structure Time had laid his destroy- ing hand upon it, and it would soon be 'one with Nineveh and Tyre.' In an inscription on one side his eye caught a familiar name. Shaking with ex- citement, he craned his body across the wall and read:
HAZEN'S BRIGADE to The Memory of Its Soldiers who fell at Stone River, Dec. 31, 1862.
The man fell back from the wall, faint and sick. Almost within an arm's length was a little depression in the earth; it had been filled by a recent rain--a pool of clear water. He crept to it to revive himself, lifted the upper part of his body on his trembling arms, thrust forward his head and saw the reflection of his face, as in a mirror. He uttered a terrible cry. His arms gave way; he fell, face downward, into the pool and yielded up the life that had spanned another life.
A BABY TRAMP
IF YOU had seen little Jo standing at the street corner in the rain, you would hardly have admired him. It was apparently an ordinary autumn rainstorm, but the water which fell upon Jo (who was hardly old enough to be either just or unjust, and so perhaps did not come under the law of impartial distribu- tion) appeared to have some property peculiar to itself: one would have said it was dark and adhesive --sticky. But that could hardly be so, even in Black- burg, where things certainly did occur that were a good deal out of the common. For example, ten or twelve years before, a shower of small frogs had fallen, as is credibly attested by a contemporaneous chronicle, the record concluding with a somewhat obscure statement to the effect that the chronicler considered it good growing-weather for Frenchmen. Some years later Blackburg had a fall of crimson snow; it is cold in Blackburg when winter is on, and the snows are frequent and deep. There can be no doubt of it--the snow in this instance was of the colour of blood and melted into water of the same hue, if water it
3: The Danger of Looking into a Pool of Water
After leaving the road the man slackened his pace, and now went forward, rather deviously, with a dis- tinct feeling of fatigue. He could not account for this, though truly the interminable loquacity of that country doctor offered itself in explanation. Seating himself upon a rock, he laid one hand upon his knee, back upward, and casually looked at it. It was lean and withered. He lifted both hands to his face. It was seamed and furrowed; he could trace the lines with the tips of his fingers. How strange!--a mere bullet-stroke and a brief unconsciousness should not make one a physical wreck. 'I must have been a long time in hospital,' he said aloud. 'Why, what a fool I am! The battle was in December, and it is now summer!' He laughed. 'No wonder that fellow thought me an escaped luna- tic. He was wrong: I am only an escaped patient.' At a little distance a small plot of ground enclosed by a stone wall caught his attention. With no very definite intent he rose and went to it. In the centre was a square, solid monument of hewn stone. It was brown with age, weather-worn at the angles, spotted with moss and lichen. Between the massive blocks were strips of grass the leverage of whose roots had pushed them apart. In answer to the challenge of this ambitious structure Time had laid his destroy- ing hand upon it, and it would soon be 'one with Nineveh and Tyre.' In an inscription on one side his eye caught a familiar name. Shaking with ex- citement, he craned his body across the wall and read:
HAZEN'S BRIGADE to The Memory of Its Soldiers who fell at Stone River, Dec. 31, 1862.
The man fell back from the wall, faint and sick. Almost within an arm's length was a little depression in the earth; it had been filled by a recent rain--a pool of clear water. He crept to it to revive himself, lifted the upper part of his body on his trembling arms, thrust forward his head and saw the reflection of his face, as in a mirror. He uttered a terrible cry. His arms gave way; he fell, face downward, into the pool and yielded up the life that had spanned another life.
A BABY TRAMP
IF YOU had seen little Jo standing at the street corner in the rain, you would hardly have admired him. It was apparently an ordinary autumn rainstorm, but the water which fell upon Jo (who was hardly old enough to be either just or unjust, and so perhaps did not come under the law of impartial distribu- tion) appeared to have some property peculiar to itself: one would have said it was dark and adhesive --sticky. But that could hardly be so, even in Black- burg, where things certainly did occur that were a good deal out of the common. For example, ten or twelve years before, a shower of small frogs had fallen, as is credibly attested by a contemporaneous chronicle, the record concluding with a somewhat obscure statement to the effect that the chronicler considered it good growing-weather for Frenchmen. Some years later Blackburg had a fall of crimson snow; it is cold in Blackburg when winter is on, and the snows are frequent and deep. There can be no doubt of it--the snow in this instance was of the colour of blood and melted into water of the same hue, if water it