bove the knee. There were about thirty at this spot, and I
was told that they were being taken to Meadow Station on hand cars. As
soon as the locomotive could pass the Chickahominy, they would be
removed to White House, and comfortably quartered in the Sanitary and
hospital boats. Some of them were fine, athletic, and youthful, and I
was directed to one who had been married only three days before.

"Doctor," said one, feebly, "I feel very cold: do you think that this is
death? It seems to be creeping to my heart. I have no feeling, in my
feet, and my thighs are numb."

A Federal soldier came along with a bucket of soup, and proceeded to
fill the canteens and plates. He appeared to be a relative of Mark
Tapley, and possessed much of that estimable person's jollity--

"Come, pardner," he said, "drink yer sup! now, old boy, this'ill warm
ye; sock it down and ye'll see yer sweetheart soon. You dead,
Ally-bammy? Go way, now. You'll live a hundred years, you will. That's
wot you'll do. Won't he, lad? What? Not any? Get out! You'll be slap on
your legs next week and hev another shot at me the week a'ter that. You
know you will! Oh! you Rebil! You, with the butternut trousers! Say!
Wake up and take some o' this. Hello! lad, pardner. Wake up!"

He stirred him gently with his foot; he bent down to touch his face. A
grimness came over his merriment. The man was stiff and dumb.

Colonel Baker, commanding the 88th New York, was a tall, martial
Irishman, who opened his heart and bottle at the same welcome, and took
me into the woods, where some of the slain still remained. He had slept
not longer than an hour, continuously, for seventy hours, and during the
past night had been called up by eight alarums. His men lay in the dark
thickets, without fires or blankets, as they had crossed the
Chickahominy in light marching order.

"Many a lad," said he, "will escape the bullet for a lingering
consumption."

We had proceeded but a very little way, when we came to a trodden place
beneath the pines, where a scalp lay in the leaves, and the imprint of a
body was plainly visible. The bayonet scabbard lay at one side, the
canteen at the other. We saw no corpses, however, as fatigue parties had
been burying the slain, and the whole wood was dotted with heaps of
clay, where the dead slept below in the oozy trenches. Quantities of
cartridges were scattered here and there, dropped by the retreating
Confederates. Some of the cartridge-pouches