and after a while going back to the Being whence they came, just as
tranquil and glad to be dead.

Paul Blecker had some such fancy as this, that last evening before the
regiment of which he was surgeon started for Harper's Ferry, while he
and the Captain were coming from camp by the hill-road into the village
(or burgh: there are no Villages in Pennsylvania). Nothing was lost on
Blecker; his wide, nervous eyes took all in: the age and complacent
quiet of this nook of the world, the full-blooded Nature asleep in the
yellow June sunset; why! she had been asleep there since the beginning,
he knew. The very Indians in these hills must have been a fishing,
drowsy crew; their names and graves yet dreamily haunted the farms and
creek-shores. The Covenanters who came after them never had roused
themselves enough to shake them off. Covenanters: the Doctor began
joking to himself, as he walked along, humming some tune, about how the
spirit of every sect came out, always alike, in the temperament, the
very cut of the face, or whim of accent. These descendants of the
Covenanters, now,--Presbyterian elders and their wives,--going down to
camp to bid their boys good-bye, devoted them to death with just as
stern integrity, as partial a view of the right, as their ancestors did
theirs at Naseby or Drumclog: their religion loved its friends and hated
its enemies just as bitterly as when it scowled at Monmouth; the "boys,"
no doubt, would call themselves Roundheads, as they had done in the
three months' service. Paul Blecker, who had seen a good many sides of
the world, laughed to himself: the very Captain here, good, anxious,
innocent as a baby, as he was, looked at the world exactly through
Balfour of Burley's dead eyes, was going to cure the disease of it by
the old pill of intolerance and bigotry. No wonder Paul laughed.

The sobered Quaker evening was making ready for night: the yellow warmth