With a look so intent, and yearning
concentration of thought so intense that it was strange that they
could not feel his presence, he bent his eyes once more upon a
scene that would imprint itself upon his memory forever.
But while he stood there, another scene came before his mental
vision. Oddly enough his thought went back to that far-off
Southern brookside, where he had lain with his hands in the cool
water. He leaned against the window-casing, with the Northern snow
whirling about his head; but he breathed the balmy breath of a
Southern forest, the wood-thrush sang in the trees overhead, and
he could--so it seemed to him--actually feel the water-worn
pebbles under his palms as he watched the life-blood ebbing from
his side. Then there was a dim consciousness of rough but kindly
arms bearing him through the underbrush, and more distinctly the
memory of weary weeks of convalescence in a mountaineer's cabin.
All these scenes of peril, before he finally reached the Union
lines, passed before him as he stood in a species of trance beside
the window of his home.
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