The Newtown bee., 1896-06-05

see rebel skirmishers In hiding. Her meek, feminine soul, which had never before directed 8 cruel thought toward any individual, suddenly tbrobbed with fierce resentment; the slow, easy going natives, who strolled down to the land- ings and leisurely carried their freight up the bank in primitive fashion, seemed to her to represent bloodthirsty, mur- derous people; she eyed them ma3evo- lently.
 One day the captain of the boat sat down by her side on the deck. He was a middle.aged man of slow, soft speech and gentle manner-as far removed from the typical bluff, gruff, profane, aggres- sive river man of literature as possible. He had already won Mrs Davis confi- dence by his deferential courtesy and at- tentions, to which she was stranger at home. There no one was unkind, but | certainly no one was noticeably consider ate of the comfort of women, especially l those of no particular importance. He | narrated to her bits of history about the ! places along the river, with every foot 1 of which he was familiar, and told anec- | dOtes of the people, half of whom he | seemed to know by their Christian names l
 "H0w can you peak so kindly of them, l an you soldier, too?" she broke out at | last. "Rebels l reckon they were, most of em, an killed our men, an would do it gain if they had a chance"
 He turnl to her slowly and without sign of surprise; she was not 8 new type to him.
 "Madam, these people along heah were mostly Union sympathizers during the wah. was a soldier in the Confedehat Ahmy."
 It was 2 shock. Ex-rebels had found their way to her little village since the war, but good many sons had gone out from there to light for the Union, and never to return; and those wanderers from the South were not made welcome, but had mostly drifted on to regions else where ill Indiana, where were friends and sympathizers. She had never so much a7 talked with one before.
 Then he told her, in quiet, remtnis- cent way some stories of his youth and his far Southern home; of how the South was then all the country he knew, and the North a faro f. cold region, whose people cared only to buy and sell, and to subiagate and rob the South, of how the war broke out and one by one his neigh bors joined the army, then his brothers, and then himself, boy of sixteen-all filled with fierce patriotism and the blind belief that they were fighting for the right; of how his brothers had been slain, and how he had gone home, when at last the conflict was over, to find that home disman5led, the mother who had been it's center forever gone, and he, yet a boy in years, lonely, disheartened and forlorn.
 IT was a revelation to the woman of few ideas that rebcs-rebcis were creatures with loves and sorrows like her own.
 And they went on up the shining river, and d little of the peace and beauty of it entered into her soul. I5 was May. and the fields and the forests were in freshest array. The gray green wilIows, the rank water naples and the glossy oaks that crowded the river bank were fringed with undergrowth and their trunks lost in Cangle of honeysucsleq, grapevines and ivy. It was primitive wilderness, such as the Indian must have looked on in his day.
 Then came Fort Henry. The boat, which stopped accommodatingly wher- ever a would-be traveller waved a hand k4rchicf, obLgingly made fast while passengers climbed the hill and wandered over the old earthwoTks that made the walls of that famous fort. In the glam- our of the moonlight and the softness of the shadows could almost be seen the soldiers who had once crowded the place; but trees had grown up within the walls since that day, and the soldiers-where were they?
 Then PiGtsburg Landing and Shiloh, and the woman from the little Indiana t0@on had reached her Mecca.
 They wandered over the battlefield, those tourists; they saw it almost as it looked on the fatal Sunday so long ago. only to-day the sun shone. and then the very heavens had wept at the sight be- low. They saw the place where the fight was fercest and most furious-the "HOrnet's Nest," where Union men and COnfederates met hand to hand, and the slaughter was so great that the dead lay in heaps. They saw the pool whose mar gin had been red with the blood of wounded men who had dragged them selves there to quench their raging thirst. To-day cattle drank from it undis turbed.
 There was a house here and there-4 primitive structures, hardly more than cabins. Mrs Davis stopped at the door of one to ask for water. An old woman came out, with scant calico gown and clumsy shoes, and eyes blurred perhaps with age, possibly with tears, but kind ly still. She grew garrulOus in response to a timid question. "Yes, she had lived hereabouts evah since befo' the wah. She an her ole man was Union, but their six boys couldn't mo- ways agree, an three lined the Union Ahmy an three the Confederate. And yes-yes, it's all done ended long ago; but some days the time seems yistiddy, an it all comes back. Her ole man couldn't keep out noways when the boys was gone, an he lined too, when Gener- al Sherman come along. An'-yes, the boys was all killed; three at Donelson, two here at Shiloh Church, an one at Chattanooga. Their pap didn't live long O far. sort oS brOlzo IOuyY 1iIro A ,,5 if if