their
home. In the early hours of the morning it had raged all around them. At
the first sound of its approach the terrified inmates fled to the cellar
where they remained till it passed. They had come forth to find their
house turned into a hospital.

The kindness of those ladies is something that the union trooper has
never forgotten, for they flitted across his pathway, a transient vision
of gentleness and mercy in that scene of carnage and suffering.

It was with a melancholy interest that I gazed upon the pallid face of
my dead comrade of the First, who lay, a peaceful smile upon his
features which were bathed in a flood of golden light, as the hot rays
of the July sun penetrated the apartment. The man in the hall was also
dead. Others of the wounded were lying on their improvised couches, as
comfortable as they could be made.

In the afternoon the ambulance train arrived. The wounded were loaded
therein, and started for Hagerstown, bidding farewell to those who
remained on duty, and who had already received marching orders which
would take them back into "Old Virginia."

The journey to Hagerstown was by way of Williamsport and the same pike
we had marched over on the 6th of the month when Jewett was killed, and
on the morning of the 14th when Weber was riding to "one more saber
charge" at Falling Waters.

Nothing is more depressing than to pass over ground where a battle has
recently been fought. Any veteran will say that he prefers the advance
to the retreat--the front to the rear of an army. The true soldier would
rather be on the skirmish-line than in the hospital or among the trains.
Men who can face the cannon's mouth without flinching, shrink from the
surgeon's knife and the amputating-table. The excitement, the noise, the
bugle's note and beat of drum, the roar of artillery, the shriek of
shell, the volley of musketry, the "zip" of bullet or "ping" of spent
ball, the orderly movement of masses of men, the shouting of orders, the
waving of battle-flags--all these things inflame the imagination, stir
the blood, and stimulate men to heroic actions. Above all, the
consciousness that the eyes of comrades are upon him, puts a man upon
his mettle and upon his pride, and compels him oftentimes to simulate a
contempt for danger which he does not feel. The senses are too, in some
sort, deadened to the hazards of the scene and, in battle, one finds
himself doing with resolute will things which under normal condi