BILL, THE BOUND BOY.

Bill Bradley was a blacksmith boy. He was an orphan, and had been apprenticed to old Carnahan the day Lincoln was elected, and had pumped the bellows and swung the sledge every day since. Old Carnahan was a stern task-master, and got out of his bound boy all the law would allow. We used to pass the shop every time we drove from our farm in the country, and there was nothing in the county seat, the greatest town we had ever seen, so notable as the great shock of fiery red hair displayed by Bill Bradley. He always stood at the door of the shop as we passed at noon-time and nodded at us with the cheeriest sort of a smile. It was a thing to remember with pride when a town boy honored us with recognition.

Money was mighty scarce in our house those days. Dimes were things to treasure carefully; and dollars, when they came, were something spoken of with bated breath and hidden away—or paid out grudgingly. And iron was in demand. The cannons made those first years of the war called into requisition it seemed to me all the fragments of old cast iron there was in the country. Blacksmiths were paying first a cent, then two cents, and finally two and a half cents a pound; though they did not make a difference whether you "took it out in trade" or demanded cash.

We boys in the country used to gather up every bit of metal that would sell, and carefully save it till we had a hundred pounds or more, and then take it to town and convert it into the infrequent cash or the almost as acceptable and quite costly groceries.

One day when we took our plunder to town we found the streets in strange commotion.

"They're listing soldiers," said a nervous voice in our ears, and when we turned we found Bill Bradley, wide-eyed, excited, and reckless. We were surprised, for we knew it was time for him to be at the forge, and we knew how strict was his employer in the matter of time.

We drove to the blacksmith shop with the fragments of iron, and found Bill Bradley there before us. He was pumping the bellows, and old man Carnahan was rating him soundly for his absence. The red head was a trifle higher, the blue eyes a trifle wider, and the breath was quicker and more charged with warning. Carnahan should have known. But he didn't. He grew more enraged, till at a word of defense from the boy he lost his temper completely, and, in a fit of exasperation, struck his apprentice.

The blow was not a severe one, and Bill could not have suffered a twinge of pain. But his pride was hurt, and that blow ended for him, as that larger, later blow ended for four millions of others, his season of servitude.

"I'll quit you," he cried, trembling and almost weeping with excitement and rage. "I'll list for a soldier."

We left the iron in a pile on the shabby floor, and followed him with palpitating hearts to the little lobby of the post-office. He was greeted with a chorus of shouts, as was each new recruit, and a touch of ridicule must have mingled with the hailing, for it straightened him and stiffened him and sent him to the captain with as firm a front as ever was borne by a novice.

If the men were changed by the donning of the blue, what transformation was this wrought in our blacksmith boy? He was inches taller and fathoms deeper. He was a man. He stood about with the recruits, his brow darkening a little when Carnahan approached, for he did not yet understand the privilege of a warrior. But more than any other man in uniform he was severed from civil life. He was one of this wonderful legion that was filling the world with comment—and filling the homes with woe. We came to town that Saturday when the troops were mustered in, and watched them drilling. We saw our blacksmith boy, and wondered how we ever had addressed him, he was a being so different from all he had been before. We saw the march by twos and fours and company front, the double-quick and the charge; and we heard the fledgling officers swear with strange oaths at the men they were later to push into conflict. We fancied Bill Bradley would not stand much of that. We saw them march to the depot, and then wept, I fear, at the passionate good-bys. There were fathers and younger brothers and desolate wives; but the saddest of all were the partings from mothers. It was so piteous, the hopelessness of their despair, the utter abandon of their tears.

And then after much shaking of hands and waving of hands the train was away. We saw load after load go by on the cars after that, and always looked eagerly for the sight of some face we knew. But the faces which we knew were swallowed and lost in a sea of strangeness—a sea, we pray, which never may grow familiar.

We read of the terrible battles that Western army fought; we read of their victories, and the far too frequent defeats. We read the lists of killed and wounded, and saw at last in the longest column the name of Private William Bradley. How far that name removed him from us! He was William now—not common Bill; not Bill the blacksmith's bound boy. We wondered if there was anything we could do for him, and in the next box that went from our town mother sent underclothes and stockings to the youth; for there was no one near us by blood or friendship who weathered that winter in the South, and no one near Bill to remember him. And one day toward the dawn of spring a letter came from the hospital, written in the clumsy hand of the orphan, acknowledging the receipt of the clothes, and thanking for them with the clumsy, genuine feeling of one who seldom speaks and never forgets a favor. He was well again, he said, and would be returned for duty in the morning. They looked for another hard battle, for the enemy was massing, and this new general that had won in the past believed in sledge-hammers and decisive measures. At the end of the letter was the sentence:

"Tha have mad me a corprl."

How proud he was of that—prouder of it than were the thousands who had other things to comfort them. And how near us he seemed to come as the weary months went by and the fighting began again. Once fix your mind on a man in the distance and a man who stands front face with danger night and day and never flinches; and it is wonderful how completely he will fill your sky. You imagine all manner of great things about him, dread all manner of terrible things, and end at last by loving him. So, when that other battle was fought by the general who believed in sturdy blows, and when Vicksburg laid down her arms at the feet of a victorious army, we read again in the terrible lists of the killed and wounded the name of our blacksmith boy. This time, too, it was among the wounded—in the longest column; but it bore a prefix that surprised us. It was "Sergeant Bradley" now. The meager details of that time did not help us to all the information we wanted. We did not know how badly he was injured, but we sent a box of jellies and pickles and things that are not issued with the rations; and got another letter telling of the battle. And it makes no difference how many of these reports you read in the paper, this letter from a man who was in the thick of the fight was far more authentic. It was far more real.

But Sergeant Bradley was sorely wounded this time. We found more about it later when a letter from the captain was printed in the county paper, detailing the events that had been important from a subaltern's standpoint and boasting of the prowess of his men. In this was told the story of a Mississippi regiment, those tigers of the South—a charge that was met by the tattered remnant of the Indiana brigade. He told of the clashing of man against man, and the loss of the banner over and over again—that banner that went down to the army with the blessings of a thousand women when Corinth fell. And it told how, when the howling, shouting, slashing, shrieking legions swept the Northerners back for a moment, and the guns were taken and not a thing could live in the sea of triumphant assault, Corporal William Bradley had wrapped his shattered arms about the flag and rolled with it right under the guns that were turned against his brethren.

"I knew you would come back again," said the hero, when the charge was repulsed and the battery was recaptured. "I knew you would come back, and I saved the flag."

He had, and he wore a sergeant's chevron for his heroism. But the hurt would not heal. The sulphurous smoke, the fearful concussions of earth and air as he burrowed under the guns and waited for rescue, the sword thrusts and bayonet pricks, the white flesh torn by whistling ball, and the two bones broken by the shattered shell—all this was tribulation which would not pass away. Sergeant Bradley lay long in the hospital.

One night in the autumn, as we sat there under a waning moon and listened to the shrill complaint of a hidden cicada, we were conscious of a figure making slow progress along the path by the roadside. It was a man, and even in the darkness of night we could see it was not familiar. For the matter of that, the figure of a man at all those days was not a common thing. Men were away in the South, as a general rule. But this figure grew stranger as it came nearer. Presently the gate swung open, and the watch-dog gave challenge. We silenced him and rose to meet a limping, swaying figure in Federal blue. He said nothing, and seemed, with that grinning insistence of the uncouth man, to wish we might remember him. We had filled our thought with Bradley, no doubt; but this could not be he.

It was, however, and when we were sure of that we gave him a welcome and hearty cheer. But he was very weak. It seemed, after the first timid acceptance of our greeting, he began to fail, and to take less and less of interest in the things about him. We thought he would like to hear news from town. He had forgotten all about the town. We hoped a little later he would enjoy a word of cheer from the front. There was no army for him now. He lay there so white on the pillow, his red hair making the whiteness more vivid; his blue eyes looking so steadily, yet so listlessly, at a single point in the wall; he stirred so slightly at the passing of day and night—and then he closed his eyes.

It was long before he opened them again. When he did he saw mother beside him. She was cooling the cloth she laid on his forehead.

"I thought I wanted to come home," he said, and then closed his eyes again. There was no relevancy in the remark. No one had spoken to him, and there had never been a thought of this or other place as a home for him. It must have been on his mind all the time.

But there was youth to support him, and the blessings of twenty years to pour their vigor into his veins. His mending was slow, but it was sure. He walked about the farm at Thanksgiving, and returned to duty at Christmas. He was a different man. It seemed impossible he ever could have been a bound boy. He was dignified, self-reliant. He spoke easily and without embarrassment, no matter if it was a general addressed. And he was a lieutenant when the war was done.

No, he didn't die. He lived to remember twenty battles and a dozen wounds. He lived to make a modest beginning in business, and to follow it to comfortable success. He owns his home now and under his broad hat hides red hair that will never be quite gray. He stands to-day with his children at the graves of the men who were with him in the army, who were with him in danger and suffering and success. He stands with those children and tells them the story and the lesson of the day.

To him it was the working out of a problem, the right solution after years of wrong. To him and to me his record typifies the average of that darker period. Thousands and tens of thousands went in with a whim to come out with a halo. They enlisted under the spur of example, of banter, of pique. Yet they fought like Greeks, and forgave like Christians. It was the hand of the common man that left home duties and home obligations to take up the greater cause of a nation. It was the triumph of simplicity—that silent legion which boasted little before the war, and never complained when hardship came. It was the triumph of all that is good in the American who lives to see the realization of dreams that were not bold enough to paint their horoscope when prophecy was loudest.