entle voice smoothing the rough way to the
hospital, and her soft hand wiping the damps from his forehead.

And there was no romance in it. _He_ could not be conjured into a fair
young knight--old, dirty, vulgar as he was. But he had fought for
her--for the fair city she loved better than life--and the gayest rider
in all that band were not more a hero to her!

Next morning the usual stillness of Sunday was broken by the renewed
rattle of musketry--though farther off and less continuous than the day
before; and by the more constant and nearer rumble of ambulance and
dead cart. At dawn many of the townspeople had gone in buggies, wagons,
and even the huge vans of the express companies, taking with them food
and stimulants, to aid the very limited ambulance corps of the army.

All day long the sad procession came in. Here a van with four or five
desperately wounded stretched on its floor; now a buggy with a faint
and bandaged form resting on the driver; again the jolting coal cart
with the still, stiff figure, covered by the blanket and not needing
the rigid upturned feet to tell the story. The hospitals were soon
overcrowded; huge tobacco warehouses had been hastily fitted up and as
hastily filled; while dozens of surgeons, bare-armed and bloody,
flitted through them, doing what man might to relieve the fearful havoc
man had made.

Women of all ranks and of all ages crowded to them, too; some wan and
haggard, seeking with tearless suspense the dear one they knew to have
been stricken down; some bearing baskets of stimulants and nourishing
food; but one and all eager and willing

"To do for those dear ones what woman
Alone in her pity can do."

The struggle had been brief but bitter. Most of the wounds were above
the waist, for the fighting had been among undergrowth and partly
against _abatis_; but the short-range volleys had mowed the men down by
ranks. More warerooms and even stores on the Main street were opened,
fitted with bunks, and filled with the maimed and suffering.

At all hours, day and night, the passer down Main street would see
through the open doors long, even rows of white bunks, each one bearing
some form distorted with agony, or calmly passing away; while the
tireless surgeon moved from cot to cot. And at the head of each a
still, patient form, almost motionless, waved the ceaseless fan or
breathed the low promise of the Living Word, to one who trembled on the
verge of the V