"If you please, sir," he said, with a salute, "we have been talking it over,
and we'd like this paper to go in along with that you're writing."
He held it out to the lieutenant, who was the nearer and had reached forward
to take it. "We s'pose you're agoin' to bury it with the guns," he said,
hesitatingly, as he handed it over.

"What is it?" asked the Colonel, shading his eyes with his hands.

"It's just a little list we made out in and among us," he said,
"with a few things we'd like to put in, so's if anyone ever hauls 'em out
they'll find it there to tell what the old battery was, and if they don't,
it'll be in one of 'em down thar 'til judgment, an' it'll sort of ease
our minds a bit." He stopped and waited as a man who had delivered
his message. The old Colonel had risen and taken the paper,
and now held it with a firm grasp, as if it might blow away
with the rising wind. He did not say a word, but his hand shook a little
as he proceeded to fold it carefully, and there was a burning gleam
in his deep-set eyes, back under his bushy, gray brows.

"Will you sort of look over it, sir, if you think it's worth while?
We was in a sort of hurry and we had to put it down just as we come to it;
we didn't have time to pick our ammunition; and it ain't written the best
in the world, nohow." He waited again, and the Colonel opened the paper
and glanced down at it mechanically. It contained first a roster,
headed by the list of six guns, named by name: "Matthew", "Mark", "Luke",
and "John", "The Eagle", and "The Cat"; then of the men, beginning with
the heading:

"Those killed".