elds and by the east wood, the masses of blue,
overcanopied also by sulphurous smoke. He finished the apple, took out a
handkerchief, and wiped fingers and lips. "Dr. McGuire, they have done
their worst. And never use the word defeat."

He jerked his hand into the air. "Do your best for the wounded, doctor,
do all that is humanly possible, but do it _here_! I am going now to the
centre to see General Lee."

Behind the wood, in a grassy hollow moderately sheltered from the
artillery fire, at the edge of the ghastly field hospital, a young
surgeon, sleeves rolled up and blood from head to foot, met the medical
director. "Doctor, the Virginia Legion came on with General McLaws.
They've just brought their colonel in--Fauquier Cary, you know. I wish
you would look at his arm."

The two looked. "There's but one thing, colonel."

"Amputation? Very well, very well. Get it over with." He straightened
himself on the boards where the men had laid him. "Sedgwick, too!
Sedgwick and I striking at each other like two savages decked with beads
and scalps! Fratricidal strife if ever there was fratricidal strife! All
right, doctor. I had a great-uncle lost his arm at Yorktown. Can't
remember him,--my father and mother loved to talk of him--old Uncle
Edward. All right--it's all right."

The two doctors were talking together. "Only a few ounces left. Better
use it here?"

"Yes, yes!--One minute longer, colonel. We've got a little chloroform."

The bottle was brought. Cary eyed it. "Is that all you've got?"

"Yes. We took a fair quantity at Manassas, but God only knows the amount
we could use! Now."

The man stretched on the boards motioned with the hand that had not been
torn by the exploding shell. "No, no! I don't want it. Keep it for some
one with a leg to cut off!" He smiled, a charming, twisted smile,
shading into a grimace of pain. "No chloroform at Yorktown! I'll be as
much of a man as was my great-uncle Edward! Yes, yes, I'm in earnest,
doctor. Put it by for the next. All right; I'm ready."

On the knoll by Sharpsburg Lee and Jackson stood and looked toward the
right. McClellan had apparently chosen to launch three battles in one
day; in the early morning against the Confederate left, at midday
against its centre, now against its right. A message came from
Longstreet. "Burnside is in motion. I've got D. R. Jones and twenty-five
hundred men."

It was evident that Burnside was in motion. With fourteen thousand men
he ca