Trooper Tales — page 100: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

go Two Women and a Soldier. Far below in the valley glinted the lights of Santiago, and upon the hill an American battery was placing its guns. ‘To-morrow those guns would be uncased, and their gaping mouths would roar for cannon meat. They would dictate to the city down in the valley to-morrow. When a man has only the life of a baby in his body, _when most of his blood and all his passion has trickled out through a wound, and breathing is a burden because he is so weary—then one’s whole sense is that of con- science, and one’s brain gropes about among things un- seen. Before Venning slept that night he saw one bright spot standing out from the gloom of the days he had lived. Hehad been a wooer many times, but he had only loved once. He had thought that purity and truth in a woman’s mind were only for the dreams of softer mo- ments. But the innocence of a young girl had revealed to him that a mind can be human and beautiful as well. As the wounded cavalryman lay in the darkness hardly breathing, many ideas, long latent, were revealed to him. He knew that the impulse of sacrifice, which he had acted upon the last evening at the post, was worthy of every atom ofa man. He learned that in the love which man’s God smiles upon there is often a sacrifice, sad but just. Before he slept that night he knew that he had done what was best by the daughter of his captain. Against this one action there hung in the balance the whole life of a man of passion. Whether it was the years or the deed of a moment which was found wanting only Ven- ning and his Judge knew, but the sleep which came to the CEORMCOOOKS (EO)