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A Certain Rich Man

Creator: White, William Allen, 1868-1944
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clogged with carts and drays and wagons of all sorts, for the citizens were moving to places of safety. As a man, the boy's memory did not tell him how the boys fared, but he does remember that it was dark in the timber where they camped that night, and that they slipped away into the woods to lie down together. The chirping of the birds at dawn wakened them, and as John sat up rubbing his eyes, he heard a rifle's crack. They were at the edge of a field, and half a mile from him, troops were marching by columns across a clearing. The rifle-shot was followed by another, and another, and then by a half-dozen. "Wake up, Bob--wake up--they's a battle," he cried, and the two boys stumbled to their feet. The shots were far in front of the marching soldiers, and the boys could not make out what the firing meant. The line formed and ran up the hill, and the boys saw the morning sun flashing on the guns of the enemy. The battery roared, and the boys were filled with terror. They ran through the woods like dogs until they came to the soldiers from Sycamore Ridge. The boys crawled on their bellies to their friends, and lay with their faces all but buried in the ground. The men were lying at the edge of the timber talking, and Watts McHurdie was on his back. "What's the matter with you, Watts?" asked Oscar Fernald. "Os," replied Watts, "I got a presentiment I'm goin' to be shot in the
Crucial Instances

CRUCIAL INSTANCES BY EDITH WHARTON TABLE OF CONTENTS I _The Duchess at Prayer_ II _The Angel at the Grave_ III _The Recovery_ IV _"Copy": A Dialogue_ V _The Rembrandt_
rear. It will kill me to be shot in the back, and I've got a notion that's how I am goin' to die." The line laughed. Captain Ward, who was sitting a few paces in the rear of the men, went over to Watts, and scuffled the man over with his foot. A bullet went through Ward's hat before he got back to his place. The men were sticking up ramrods and betting on the number of minutes they would last. No ramrod stood more than ten minutes. Martin Culpepper threw up his hat five times before a bullet hit it; but he went bareheaded the rest of the day, and John Barclay, in sheer fear, began to dig a hole under him. After he had been on his belly for an hour, Henry Schnitzler got tired and rose. The men begged him to lie down. But his only reply when they told him he was a fool was, "Vell, vot of it?" And when they said he would be shot, he answered again, "Vell, vot of it?" And when Jake Dolan cried, "You pot-gutted Dutchman, sit down or there'll be a sauer-kraut shower in hell pretty quick," Henry shook his fat sides a moment and laughed, "Vell, vot of dot--altzo!" For an hour, that seemed ten, he moved back and forth on the line, firing and joking, and then the spell broke and a bullet took part of his jaw. As he dropped to his position, with the blood gushing from his face, his eyes blazed, and he spat out, "By hell-tam, now I vos mad," and he fought the day out and died that night. But as he sank to his place when the bullet hit him, Watts McHurdie saw Schnitzler stagger, and through the smoke, knew that he was wounded. Watts rushed to Schnitzler and bent over him, when a ball hit Watts and went ripping through the fleshy part of his hip. "Shot in the