for your return to your command."

"Has the Sanitary Commission such credit that your note will be
accepted as a guaranty, in good form, for my return?"

"The circumstances in this case are peculiar," said the Doctor; "some of
your men will not report to their commands for a week. You will be ready
for your company before your company is ready for you."

"That is true enough, Doctor; but I should wish to observe all military
requirement."

He left me for a while and returned with a piece of paper in his hand.

"Well, what do you think of this?"

It was a surgeon's commitment of Private Jones Berwick, company and
regiment given, into the hands of the Sanitary Commission for ten days.
I could say no more, except to speak my gratitude for his kindness.

"I am sorry," said Dr. Khayme, "to be unable to offer you the best of
quarters. The Commission has so recently been organized that we have not
yet succeeded in getting thorough order into our affairs; in fact, my
work yesterday was rather the work of a volunteer than the work of the
Commission. Our tents are now beyond Georgetown Heights; in a few days
we shall move our camps, and shall increase our comfort."

The ambulance was driven through some of the principal streets. The
sidewalks and carriageways were crowded; civilians and soldiers; wagons,
guns, caissons, ambulances; companies, spick-and-span, which, had not
yet seen service; ones, twos, threes, squads of men who had escaped from
the disaster of the 21st, unarmed, many of them, without
knapsacks, haggard.

At the corners of the streets were rude improvised tables behind which
stood men and women serving food and drink to the famished fugitives.
The rain fell steadily, a thick drizzle. Civilians looked their anxiety.
A general officer rode by, surrounded by the remnant of his staff, heads
bent down, gloomy. Women wept while serving the hungry. The unfinished
dome of the Capitol, hardly seen through the rain, loomed ominous.
Depression over all: ambulances full of wounded men, tossing and
groaning; fagged-out horses, vehicles splashed with mud; policemen
dazed, idle; newsboys crying their merchandise; readers eagerly
reading--not to know the result to the army, but the fate of some loved
one; stores closed; whispers; doom.

I turned to Dr. Khayme; he smiled. Then he made Reed halt; he got out of
the ambulance and went to one of the tables. A woman gave him coffee,
which he brought to me, and made me drink