and manners very different from what would have been
expected. My benevolent companion having already made a preliminary
exploration of the hospitals of the place, before sharing my bed with
him, as above mentioned, I joined him in a second tour through them. The
authorities of Middletown are evidently leagued with the surgeons of
that place, for such a break-neck succession of pitfalls and chasms I
have never seen in the streets of a civilized town. It was getting late
in the evening when we began our rounds. The principal collections of
the wounded were in the churches. Boards were laid over the tops of the
pews, on these some straw was spread, and on this the wounded lay, with
little or no covering other than such scanty clothes as they had on.
There were wounds of all degrees of severity, but I heard no groans
or murmurs. Most of the sufferers were hurt in the limbs, some had
undergone amputation, and all had, I presume, received such attention as
was required. Still, it was but a rough and dreary kind of comfort that
the extemporized hospitals suggested. I could not help thinking the
patients must be cold; but they were used to camp-life, and did not
complain. The men who watched were not of the soft-handed variety of the
race. One of them was smoking his pipe as he went from bed to bed. I saw
one poor fellow who had been shot through the breast; his breathing was
labored, and he was tossing, anxious and restless. The men were debating
about the opiate he was to take, and I was thankful that I happened
there at the right moment to see that he was well narcotized for the
night. Was it possible that my Captain could be lying on the straw in
one of these places? Certainly _possible_, but not probable; but as the
lantern was held over each bed, it was with a kind of thrill that I
looked upon the features it illuminated. Many times, as I went from
hospital to hospital in my wanderings, I started as some faint
resemblance--the shade of a young man's hair, the outline of his
half-turned face-recalled the presence I was in search of. The face
would turn towards me and the momentary illusion would pass away, but
still the fancy clung to me. There was no figure huddled up on its rude
couch, none stretched at the road-side, none toiling languidly along
the dusty pike, none passing in car or in ambulance, that I did not
scrutinize, as if it might be that for which I was making my pilgrimage
to the battle-field.

"There are tw