My theological convictions were distinctly more hazy than those of the clerical gentleman, and my ability to think of Tom Collins as a person saturated with sanctity, was less than his. But I accepted the clergyman's expert opinion as unquestioningly as I could, and Tom Collins confirmed it. When I visited him in the guard-house I found him positively ecstatic in the sunlight of Divine acceptance which illuminated the Valley of the Shadow of Death. When I mentioned the possibility that my plea in his behalf might even yet prove effective, and that the sentence which condemned him to death the next morning might still be revoked, he replied, with apparent sincerity:
"Oh, I hope not! For then I must wait before entering into joy! But the Lord's will be done!"
The next morning was the one appointed for Tom Collins's death. His coffin was ready and a shallow grave had been dug to receive his body.
The chaplain and I mounted with him to the cart, and rode with him to the place of execution, where three other men were to die that day. Tom's mood was placidly exultant. And the chaplain alone shed tears in his behalf.
When the place of execution was reached, an adjutant came forward and read three death warrants. Then he held up another paper and read it. It was a formal document from the War Department, sustaining the legal points submitted in Tom Collins's case, disapproving the finding and sentence, and ordering the man formally enlisted and returned to duty.
The chaplain fell into a collapse of uncontrollable weeping. Tom Collins came to his relief with the injunction: "Oh, come, now, old snuffy, cheer up! I'll bet you even money I beat you to Hell yet."
That clergyman afterward confided to me his doubts of "deathbed repentances," at least in the case of habitual criminals.
In the spring of 1864, the battery to which I belonged mutinied--in an entirely proper and soldierlike way. Longstreet had returned, and the Army of Northern Virginia was about to encounter Grant in the most stupendous campaign of the war. We were old soldiers, and we knew what was coming. But as we had no horses to draw our guns, and as the quartermaster's department seemed unable to find horses for us, we were omitted from the orders for the advance into the region of the Wilderness, where the fighting was obviously to begin. We were ordered to Cobham Station, a charming region of verdure-clad hills and brawling streams, where there was no soldiers' work to do and no prospect of anything less ignoble than provost duty.