er prayers. I saw them at the
ambulance, surrounding, passing, lifting, stepping in and out,
ferreting, then moving slowly up with their booty round the hill's brow.
Then silence; then hoofs; then silence again, except the outpouring
negress, scriptural, melodious, symbolic:

"'Oh--Lawd!
Sinner is in my way, Daniel.'"

All this while I sat on the stone. "They have done us brown," I said
aloud, and hearing my voice waked me from whatever state I had been in.
My senses bounded, and I ran to the hurt soldiers. One was very sick. I
should not have known what to do for them, but people began to arrive,
brought from several quarters by the fusillade--two in a wagon from
Cedar Springs, two or three on horses from the herds they were with in
the hills, and a very old man from somewhere, who offered no assistance
to any one, but immediately seated himself and began explaining what we
all should have done. The negress came out of her rocks, exclamatory
with pity over the wounded, and, I am bound to say, of more help to them
than any of us, kind and motherly in the midst of her ceaseless
discourse. Next arrived Major Pidcock in his duster, and took charge of
everything.

"Let yer men quit the'r guns, did ye, general?" piped the very old man.
"Escort oughtn't never to quit the'r guns. I seen that at Molino del
Rey. And ye should have knowed that there stone didn't crawl out in the
road like a turtus to git the sunshine."

"Where were you?" thundered the Major to the mounted escort, who now
appeared, half an hour after the event, from our flanks, which they had
been protecting at an immense distance. "Don't you know your duty's to
be on hand when you hear firing?"

"Law, honey!" said the cook, with a guffaw, "lemme git my han's over my
mouf."

"See them walls they fooled yer with!" continued the old man, pointing
with his stick. "I could have told yer them wasn't natural. Them doesn't
show like country rock;" by which I found that he meant their faces were
new-exposed and not weather-beaten.

"No doubt you could have saved us, my friend," said the Major, puffing
blandly.

But one cannot readily impress ninety summers. "Yes, I could have told
yer that," assented the sage, with senile complacence. "My wife could
have told yer that. Any smart girl could have told yer that."

"I shall send a despatch for re-enforcements," announced Pidcock. "Tap
the telegraph wire," he ordered.

"I have to repawt to the Major," s