saw blood oozing from where the vedette's bullet that had missed him had
pierced her brain.

And yet he saw in that pale dead face only the other face which he
remembered now had been turned like this towards his own. It was very
strange. And this was the end, and this was his expiation! He raised his
own face humbly, blindly, despairingly to the inscrutable sky; it looked
back upon him from above as coldly as the dead face had from below.

Yet out of this he struck a faint idea that he voiced aloud in nearly
the same words which he had used to Colonel Starbottle only three years
ago. "It was with his own pistol too," he said, and took up his musket.

He walked deliberately down the hill, occasionally trying the stock of
his musket in the loose earth, and at last suddenly remained motionless,
in the attitude of leaning over it. At the same moment there was a
distant shout; two thin parallel streams of blue and steel came issuing
through the woods like a river, appeared to join tumultuously in the
open before the hill, and out of the tumult a mounted officer called
upon him to surrender.

He did not reply.

"Come down from there, Johnny Reb, I want to speak to you," called a
young corporal.

He did not move.

"It's time to go home, Johnny."