To one imbued from infancy with the fascinating fallacy
that all men are born equal, unquestioning submission to authority is not
easily mastered, and the American volunteer soldier in his “green and
salad days” is among the worst known. That is how it happened that one
of Buell’s men, Private Bennett Story Greene, committed the indiscretion
of striking his officer. Later in the war he would not have done that;
like Sir Andrew Aguecheek, he would have “seen him damned” first. But
time for reformation of his military manners was denied him: he was
promptly arrested on complaint of the officer, tried by court-martial and
sentenced to be shot. “You might have thrashed me and let it go at that,” said the condemned
man to the complaining witness; “that is what you used to do at school,
when you were plain Will Dudley and I was as good as you. Nobody saw me
strike you; discipline would not have suffered much.”

“Ben Greene, I guess you are right about that,” said the lieutenant. “Will you forgive me? That is what I came to see you about.”

There was no reply, and an officer putting his head in at the door of the
guard-tent where the conversation had occurred, explained that the time
allowed for the interview had expired. The next morning, when in the
presence of the whole brigade Private Greene was shot to death by a squad
of his comrades, Lieutenant Dudley turned his back upon the sorry
performance and muttered a prayer for mercy, in which himself was
included. A few weeks afterward, as Buell’s leading division was being ferried over
the Tennessee River to assist in succoring Grant’s beaten army, night was
coming on, black and stormy. Through the wreck of battle the division
moved, inch by inch, in the direction of the enemy, who had withdrawn a
little to reform his lines. But for the lightning the darkness was
absolute. Never for a moment did it cease, and ever when the thunder did
not crack and roar were heard the moans of the wounded among whom the men
felt their way with their feet, and upon whom they stumbled in the gloom. The dead were there, too—there were dead a-plenty. In the first faint gray of the morning, when the swarming advance had
paused to resume something of definition as a line of battle, and
skirmishers had been thrown forward, word was passed along to call the
roll. The first sergeant of Lieutenant Dudley’s company stepped to the
front and began to name the men in alphabetical order. He had no written
roll, but a good memory. 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. The captain strode quickly to his side and
said sharply:

“Call that name again.”

Apparently the Society for Psychical Research is not first in the field
of curiosity concerning the Unknown. “Bennett Greene.”

“Here!”

All faces turned in the direction of the familiar voice; the two men
between whom in the order of stature Greene had commonly stood in line
turned and squarely confronted each other. “Once more,” commanded the inexorable investigator, and once more came—a
trifle tremulously—the name of the dead man:

“Bennett Story Greene.”

“Here!”

At that instant a single rifle-shot was heard, away to the front, beyond
the skirmish-line, followed, almost attended, by the savage hiss of an
approaching bullet which passing through the line, struck audibly,
punctuating as with a full stop the captain’s exclamation, “What the
devil does it mean?”

Lieutenant Dudley pushed through the ranks from his place in the rear. “It means this,” he said, throwing open his coat and displaying a visibly
broadening stain of crimson on his breast. His knees gave way; he fell
awkwardly and lay dead. A little later the regiment was ordered out of line to relieve the
congested front, and through some misplay in the game of battle was not
again under fire. Nor did Bennett Greene, expert in military executions,
ever again signify his presence at one. SOME HAUNTED HOUSES


THE ISLE OF PINES


FOR many years there lived near the town of Gallipolis, Ohio, an old man
named Herman Deluse. Very little was known of his history, for he would
neither speak of it himself nor suffer others. It was a common belief
among his neighbors that he had been a pirate—if upon any better evidence
than his collection of boarding pikes, cutlasses, and ancient flintlock
pistols, no one knew. He lived entirely alone in a small house of four
rooms, falling rapidly into decay and never repaired further than was
required by the weather. It stood on a slight elevation in the midst of
a large, stony field overgrown with brambles, and cultivated in patches
and only in the most primitive way. It was his only visible property,
but could hardly have yielded him a living, simple and few as were his
wants. He seemed always to have ready money, and paid cash for all his
purchases at the village stores roundabout, seldom buying more than two
or three times at the same place until after the lapse of a considerable
time. He got no commendation, however, for this equitable distribution
of his patronage; people were disposed to regard it as an ineffectual
attempt to conceal his possession of so much money. That he had great
hoards of ill-gotten gold buried somewhere about his tumble-down dwelling
was not reasonably to be doubted by any honest soul conversant with the
facts of local tradition and gifted with a sense of the fitness of
things. On the 9th of November, 1867, the old man died; at least his dead body
was discovered on the 10th, and physicians testified that death had
occurred about twenty-four hours previously—precisely how, they were
unable to say; for the _post-mortem_ examination showed every organ to be
absolutely healthy, with no indication of disorder or violence. According to them, death must have taken place about noonday, yet the
body was found in bed. The verdict of the coroner’s jury was that he
“came to his death by a visitation of God.”  The body was buried and the
public administrator took charge of the estate. A rigorous search disclosed nothing more than was already known about the
dead man, and much patient excavation here and there about the premises
by thoughtful and thrifty neighbors went unrewarded. The administrator
locked up the house against the time when the property, real and
personal, should be sold by law with a view to defraying, partly, the
expenses of the sale. The night of November 20 was boisterous. A furious gale stormed across
the country, scourging it with desolating drifts of sleet. Great trees
were torn from the earth and hurled across the roads.