The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1910-11-05

! breast: the swift hill swallows scared
and skinned along the edges of the
smoke as though inviting him. From
| her rocky height she saw the priest
enter the drifting clouds.
A man going TO his consecrated
duty. And she? Where lay her
duty? And why was she not about
it?
A moment later the troopers
mounted and cantered off down the
hill. veering wide to skirt the head Of
a column of infantry marching in;
and when the Special Messenger
started TO return she found masses of
men threatening to separate her from
her Observation-Disclosures, sweating,
dirty-faced men, clutching their rifle
butts with red hands.
Their officers rode ahead. thrash
ing through the moist grass; a forest
OF bayonets swayed in the sun: flag
after flag passed, slanting the masses
of blue.
She and her prisoner looked on.
The flag of the siXty-third New York
swept by; the flags of the Sixty-ninth
and Eighty eighth followed. A mo-
ment later the columns halted.
Your Excelsiors," said Moray,
calmly.
They are under fire already. Shall
we move on?"
Father Corby, the chaplain, she
murmured.
j soldier in the ranks. standing
With ordered arms, fell straight back
ward, heavily; a corporal near him
doubled up with a grunt.
The Special Messenger heard bull
lets smacking on rocks: heard their
fr111 =
dies; saw them knock men fiat
Meanwhile the flags dropped above the
halted ranks, their folds stirred lazily,
fell and scarcely moved. The pla-
toon fire rolled on unbroken some
where out in the smoke yonder.
A priest passed them in the smoke.
Her prisoner raised his hand to the
visor of his cap.
Attention.. Attention. far
voice cried. and the warning ran
from rank to rank, taken up in turn
by officer and officer. Father Corby
was climbing to the summit of a
mound close by. As order rang out,
bugles repeated it. and the blue ranks
faced their chaplain
Then the priest from his rocky pull
pit raised his ringing voice in eXpla-
nation. He told the three regiments
of the Irish brigade-now scarcely
more than three battalions of two
companies each-that every soldier
there could receive the benefit of alb
by making a sincere act of
contrition and resolving on first OPP
pOrtunity. to confess
He told them that they were going
to be sent into battle. He urged them
to do their duty; reminded them of
the high and sacred nature of their
trust as soldiers of the republic, and
ended by warning them that the
Catholic Church refuses Christian
burial to him who deserts his flag.
In the deep battlefield silence the
priest raised up his hands; three regi-
ments sank to their knees as a single
man, and the Special Messenger and
her prisoner knelt with them.
"Dominus noster Jesus Christus
vos absolvat, ct ego, aucto ritate ipius,
vos absolve alb omne vinculo-"
The thunder of the guns drowned
the priests voice for a moment, then
it sounded again, firm and clear:
'Absolve vos a peccatis-''
The roar of artillery blotted out
the word; then again they rang out:
In nomine PATHS. ct Fill. ct Spiri- /.
Lus Sancti, Amen
The officers had remounted now, !
their horses plunging in the smoke (
The boys were moving forward: rivers /
IF bayonets flowed into the maelstrom |
where the red lightning played inces-
yantlV