from the
drivers of passing army waggons.

Long since the towering smoke in the west had veiled the sun; and
now the sky had become gray and thick, and already a fine drizzling
rain was falling, turning the red dust to grease.

Slipping, floundering, his horse bore him on under darkening skies;
rain fell heavily now; he bared his hot head to it; raised his
face, masked with grime, and let the drops fall on the dark scar
that burned under the shifting bandage.

In the gathering gloom eastward he saw the horizon redden and
darken and redden with the cannon flashes; the immense battle
rumour filled his ears and brain, throbbing, throbbing.

"Which way, friend?" demanded a patrol, carelessly throwing his
horse across Berkley's path.

"Orderly to Colonel Arran, 8th New York Lancers, wounded. Is that
the hospital, yonder?"

"Them school buildin's," nodded the patrol. "Say, is your colonel
very bad? I'm 20th New York, doin' provost. We seen you fellers
at White Oak. Jesus! what a wallop they did give us----"

He broke off grimly, turned his horse, and rode out into a soggy
field where some men were dodging behind a row of shaggy hedge
bushes. And far behind Berkley heard his loud, bullying voice:

"Git! you duck-legged, egg-suckin', skunk-backed loafers! Go on,
there! Aw, don't yer talk back to me 'r I'll let m' horse bite yer
pants off! Back yer go! Forrard! Hump! Hump! Scoot!"

Through the heavily falling rain he saw the lighted school
buildings looming among the trees; turned into the drive, accounted
for himself, gave his horse to a negro with orders to care for it,
and followed a ward-master into an open-faced shed where a kettle
was boiling over a sheet-iron stove.

The ward-master returned presently, threading his way through a
mass of parked ambulances to the shed where Berkley sat on a broken
cracker box.

"Colonel Arran is very low. I guess you'd better not bother him
to-night."

"Is he--mortally hurt?"

"I've seen worse."

"He may get well?"

"I've seen 'em get well," said the non-committal ward-master.
Then, looking Berkley over: "You're pretty dirty, ain't you? Are
you--" he raised his eyebrows significantly.

"I'm clean," said Berkley with the indifference habituated to filth.

"All right. They'll fix you up a cot somewhere. If Colonel Arran
comes out all right I'll call you. He's full of opium now."

"Did they get the bullet?"

"Oh, yes. I ain't a surgeon, my friend