"To be sure," I replied; "but you said that next time we met we'd shake
hands."
He sank back and his jaw dropped.
"You remember me--Grant? How is Sir Francis?"
"Remember you!" he said, seizing my hand, "Oh! I say, what a young
beast I was!"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------I learned more than once that he and his brother turned out fine, manly
soldiers, and did their duty well in that hard-fought campaign. I tried
also to do mine, and came back one of the last to leave the Crimea,
another grade higher in my rank.
During my college life I often used to go over and see the brothers
Brownsmith, to be warmly welcomed at every visit; and if ever he got to
know that I was going to Isleworth to spend Sunday, Ike used to walk
over, straighten his back and draw himself up to attention, and salute
me, looking as serious as if in uniform. He did not approve of my going
into the artillery, though.
"It's wrong," he used to say; and in these days he was back at
Isleworth, for Mr Solomon had entered into partnership with his
brother, and both Ike and Shock had elected to follow him back to the
old place.
"Yes," he would say, "it's wrong, Mars Grant, I was always drew to you
because your father had been a sojer; but what would he have said to you
if he had lived to know as you turned gunner?"
"What would you have had me, then? You must have artillerymen."
"Yes, of course, sir; but what are they? You ought to have been a
hoozoar:-"`Oh, them as with jackets go flying,
Oh, they are the gallant hoozoars,'"
he sang--at least he tried to sing; but I went into the artillery.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------By the way, I did not tell you the name of the sergeant who ushered
Philip Dalton into my shelter that night. His name was John Hampton, as
fine a soldier as ever stepped. He joined the artillery when I got my
commission. Poor Shock, for I knew him better by that name; he followed
me with the fidelity of a dog; he always contrived something hot for me
when we were almost starving, and any day he would have gone without
that I might eat. And I believe that he would have fought for me to the
death.
Poor Shock! The night when I was told that he could not live, after
being struck down by a piece of shell, I knelt by him in the mud and
held his hand. He just looked up in my face and said softly: "Remember being shut up in the sand-pit, sir, and how you prayed? If
you wouldn't mind, sir--once again?"
I bent down lower and lower, and at last--soldier--hardened by horrors--
grown stern by the life I led--I felt as if I had lost in that rough,
true man the best of friends, and I cried over him like a child!