of my body, but I rolled over upon my feet with marvellous
sprightliness, till, at last, when I gained a corn-field, my attention
was diverted to a strange, rattling noise behind me. I turned and
looked. It was my horse, the rail dangling between his legs, his eyes on
fire in the night. As we regarded each other, a shell burst between us.
He dashed away across the inhospitable fields, and I fell into the high
road among the routed. Expletives like these ensued:--

"Sa-a-ay! Hoss! Pardner! Are you going to ride over this wounded
feller?"

"Friend, have you a drop of water for a man that's fainted here?"

"Halloo! Buster! Keep that bayonit out o' my eye, if you please!"

"Where's Gen. Banks? I hearn say he's a prisoner."

"I do' know!"

"Was we licked, do you think?"

"No! We warn't nothin' o' the kind. Siegel's outflanked 'em and okkepies
the field. A man jus' told me so."

"Huzza! Hearties, cheer up! Siegel's took the field, and Stonewall
Jackson's dead."

"Three cheers for Siegel."

"Hoorooar, hoor--"

"Oh! Get out! That's all blow. Don't try stuff me! We're lathered;
that's the long and shawt of it."

"Is that so? Boys, I guess we're beat!"

Such was the character of exclamations that ran here and there, and
after a little volley of them had been let off, a long pause succeeded,
when only the sighs of the injured and the tramp of men and nags broke
the silence. Overhead the starlight and the blue sky; on either side the
rolling, shadowy fields; and wrapping the horizon in a gray, grisly
girdle, the reposing woods plentiful with dew. Nature was putting forth
all her still, sweet charms, as if to make men witness the damned
contrast of their own wrath, violence, and murder. Even thus,
perhaps,--I reasoned,--in the days of old, did the broken multitudes of
Xerxes return by the shores of the golden Archipelago; and the
Hellespont shone as peacefully as these silvernesses of earth and
firmament. The dulness of history became invested with new intelligence.
I filled in the details of a thousand routs conned in school-days, when
only the dry outlines lay before me. They were mysteries before, and
lacked the warmness of life and truth; but now I _saw_ them! The armor
and the helmets fell away, with all other trappings of custom, language,
and ceremony. This pale giant, who walked behind the ambulance, leaning
upon the footboard, was the limping Achilles, with the arrow of Paris
festering in his heel. This anc