still-house," was the answer. "It's about half a mile further
on, and deep in the woods. And I say you, Tom Arnold, pull off your
disguise and go after Dr. Savage as fast as you can. Tell him to come to
the still-house on the fleetest horse he can get hold of; and bring
along everything necessary to dress scalds and pistol-shot wounds. Say
there's no time to lose or Boyd'll die on our hands. Now up with your
load, boys, and on again."

The voice had a tone of command and the orders were instantly obeyed.

The still-house was an old, dilapidated frame building, whose rude
accommodations differed widely from those to which, save during his army
life, Boyd had been accustomed from infancy.

They carried him in and laid him down upon a rough pallet of straw
furnished with coarse cotton sheets and an army blanket or two, not over
clean.

But in his dire extremity of pain he heeded naught of this, and his
blinded eyes could not see the bare rafters overhead, the filthy
uncarpeted floor, the few broken chairs and rude board seats, or the
little unpainted pine table with its bit of flickering, flaming tallow
candle, stuck in an old bottle.

His comrades did what they could for his relief; but it was not much,
and their clumsy handling was exquisite torture to the raw, quivering
flesh, and his entreaties that they would put him out of his misery at
once, by sending a bullet through his brain, were piteous to hear. They
had taken his arms from him, or he would have destroyed himself.

The room was filled with doleful sounds,--the groans and sighs of men in
sore pain, but his rose above all others.

Dr. Savage arrived at length, but half drunk, and, an unskillful surgeon
at his best, made but clumsy work with his patients on this occasion.

Yet the applications brought, in time, some slight alleviation of even
Boyd's unendurable agony; his cries grew fainter and less frequent, till
they ceased altogether, and like the other wounded he relieved himself
only with an occasional moan or groan.

The doctor had finished his task, and lay in a drunken sleep on the
floor. The uninjured raiders had followed his example, the candle had
burned itself out and all was darkness and silence save the low, fitful
sounds of suffering.

To Boyd sleep was impossible, the pain of his burns was still very
great; especially in his eyes, the injury to which he feared must result
in total blindness. How could he bear it? he asked himself, to go