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And so wishing, Private Grayrock, overcome at last by the languor of the afternoon and lulled by the stilly sounds of insects droning and prosing in certain fragrant shrubs, so far forgot the interests of the United States as to fall asleep and expose himself to capture. And sleeping he dreamed.
For two hours every unconverted civilian of them had been evolving enemies from his imagination, and peopling the woods in his front with them, and Grayrock's shot had started the whole encroaching host into visible existence. Having fired, all retreated, breathless, to the reserves all but Grayrock, who did not know in what direction to retreat.
The contact of the back of his head with the tree has pushed his cap downward over his eyes, almost concealing them; one seeing him would say that he slept. Private Grayrock did not sleep; to have done so would have imperiled the interests of the United States, for he was a long way outside the lines and subject to capture or death at the hands of the enemy.
The men answered to their names as he ran down the alphabet to G. "Gorham." "Here!" "Grayrock." "Here!" The sergeant's good memory was affected by habit: "Greene." "Here!" The response was clear, distinct, unmistakable! A sudden movement, an agitation of the entire company front, as from an electric shock, attested the startling character of the incident. The sergeant paled and paused.
"Halt!" shouted Private Grayrock, peremptorily as in duty bound, backing up the command with the sharp metallic snap of his cocking rifle "who goes there?" There was no answer; at least there was an instant's hesitation, and the answer, if it came, was lost in the report of the sentinel's rifle.
The sun was low and red in the west; the level rays projected from the trunk of each giant pine a wall of shadow traversing the golden haze to eastward until light and shade were blended in undistinguishable blue. Private Grayrock rose to his feet, looked cautiously about him, shouldered his rifle and set off toward camp.
I should not care to undertake to interest the reader in the fate of an army; what we have here to consider is that of Private Grayrock.
As the unfortunate soldier knelt beside that masterwork of civil war the shrilling bird upon the bough overhead stilled her song and, flushed with sunset's crimson glory, glided silently away through the solemn spaces of the wood. At roll-call that evening in the Federal camp the name William Grayrock brought no response, nor ever again there-after.
Lost at his post unable to say in which direction to look for an enemy's approach, and in which lay the sleeping camp for whose security he was accountable with his life conscious, too, of many another awkward feature of the situation and of considerations affecting his own safety, Private Grayrock was profoundly disquieted.
Passing an opening that reached into the heart of the little thicket he looked in, and there, supine upon the earth, its arms all abroad, its gray uniform stained with a single spot of blood upon the breast, its white face turned sharply upward and backward, lay the image of himself! the body of John Grayrock, dead of a gunshot wound, and still warm! He had found his man.
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