l
consciousness was so slight that no memory has remained to tell of my
sensations.

'My first vivid sensation--it is before me at this minute--was on
entering the little mountain village of the Marien Kreutz. I was borne
on a litter by four men, for the path was inaccessible except to foot
passengers. It was evening, and the long procession of the wounded men
wound its way up the mountain defile and along the little street of the
village, which now was crowded by the country-people, who with sad and
tearful faces stood looking on their sons and brothers, or asking for
those whom they were never to behold again. The little chapel of the
village was converted into a hospital, and here beds were brought from
every cabin, and all the preparations for tending the sick began with a
readiness that surprised me.

'As they bore me up the aisle of the chapel, a voice called out some
words in Tyrolese; the men halted and turned round, and then carried me
back into a small chapelry, where a single sick man was lying, whom in
an instant I recognised as my wounded companion of the road. With a nod
of rude but friendly recognition, he welcomed me, and I was placed near
him on a straw mattress stretched beneath the altar.

'Why I had been spared in the fearful carnage, and for what destiny I
was reserved, were thoughts which rapidly gave way to others of deep
despondency at my fortune--a despair that made me indifferent to life.
The dreadful issue of the expedition would, I well knew, have ruined
more prosperous careers than mine in that service, where want of success
was the greatest of all crimes. Careless of my fate, I lived on in
gloomy apathy, not one gleam of hope or comfort to shine upon the
darkness of my misery.

'This brooding melancholy took entire possession of me, and I took no
note of the scenes around me. My ear was long since accustomed to the
sad sounds of the sickbeds; the cries of suffering, and the low moanings
of misery had ceased to move me; even the wild and frantic ravings of
the wounded man near broke not in upon my musings, and I lived like one
immured within a solitary dungeon.

'I lay thus one night--my sadness and gloom weightier than ever on my
broken spirits--listening to the echoed sounds of suffering that rose
into the vaulted roof, and wishing for death to call me away from such a
scene of misery, when I heard the low chanting of a priest coming along
the aisle; and the moment after the footstep