hunder muttering on the horizon now went on without ceasing.

Dick was awed. Like many another his brain exposed to such tremendous
pressure for two or three days, was not quite normal. It was quickly
heated and excited by fancies, and time and place alone were enough to
weigh down even the coolest and most seasoned. He pressed close to his
Confederate friends, whose names he never knew, and who never knew his,
and they, feeling the same influence, never for an instant left the man
who held the lantern.

The muttering thunder now came closer and broke in terrible crashes. The
lightning flashed again and again so vividly that Dick, with involuntary
motion, threw up his hands to shelter his eyes. But he could see before
him the mournful forest, where so many good men had fallen, and, turned
red in the gleam of the lightning, it was more terrifying than it had
been in the mere black of the night. The wind, too, was now blowing,
and the forest gave forth what Dick's ears turned into a long despairing
wail.

"She's about to bust," said the lantern bearer, looking up at the
menacing sky. "Jim, you'll have to take your wettin' as it comes."

A moment later the storm burst in fact. The rain rushed down on them,
soaking them through in an instant, but Dick, so far from caring, liked
it. It cooled his heated body and brain, and he knew that it was more
likely to help than hurt the wounded who yet lay on the ground.

The lightning ceased before the sweep of the rain, but the lantern was
well protected by its glass cover, and they still searched. The lantern
bearer suddenly uttered a low cry.

"Boys!" he said, "Here's Sam!"

A thick and uncommonly powerful man lay doubled up against a bush. His
face was white. Dick saw that blood had just been washed from it by
the rain. But he could see no rising and falling of the chest, and he
concluded that he was dead.

"Take the lantern, Jim," said the leader. Then he knelt down and put his
finger on his brother's wrist.

"He ain't dead," he said at last. "His pulse is beatin' an' he'll come
to soon. The rain helped him. Whar was he hit? By gum, here it is! A
bullet has ploughed all along the side of his head, runnin' 'roun' his
skull. Here, you Yank, did you think you could kill Sam by shootin' him
in the head with a bullet? We've stood him up in front of our lines, and
let you fellows break fifty pound shells on his head. You never done him
no harm, 'cept once when two solid shot