dull throbbing
pain upon his brow and the stinging sensation in his shoulder, and knew
that he was wounded, but whether dangerously or not he could not judge.
He could feel the trickling of blood from the bosom of a wounded comrade
at his side, and could hear the groans of another whose thigh was
shattered by the fragment of a shell; but the situation brought no
feeling of repugnance, for he was yet half stunned and lay as in a
lethargy, wishing only to drain one draught of water and then to sleep.
The monotonous rumbling of the ambulance wheels sounded distinctly upon
his ear, and he could listen, with a kind of objectless curiosity, to
the casual conversation of the driver, as he exchanged words here and
there with others, who were returning upon the same dismal errand from
the scene of carnage. The shadows of night spread around him, covering
the field of battle like a pall flung in charity by nature over the
corpses of the slain. Then his bewildered fancies darkened with the
surrounding gloom, and he thought that he was coffined and in a hearse,
being dragged to the graveyard to be buried. He put forth his hand to
push the coffin lid, but it fell again with weakness, and when his
fingers came in contact with the splintered bone that protruded from his
neighbor's thigh, and he felt the warm gushing of the blood that welled
with each throb of the hastily bound artery, he puzzled his dreamy
thoughts to know what it might mean. At last all became a blank upon his
brain, and he relapsed once more into unconsciousness.

And so, from dreamy wakefulness to total oblivion he passed to and fro,
without an interval to part the real from the unreal. He was conscious
of being lifted into the arms of men, and being borne along carefully by
strong arms. Whither? It seemed to his dull senses that they were
bearing him into a sepulchre, but he was not terrified, but careless and
resigned; or if he thought of it at all, it was to rejoice that when
laid there, he should be undisturbed. Presently a vague fancy passed
athwart his mind, that perhaps the crawling worms would annoy him, and
he felt uneasy, but yet not afraid. Afterward, there was a sensation of
quiet and relief, and his brain, for a space, was in repose. Then a
bright form bent over him, and he thought it was an angel. He could feel
a soft hand brushing the dampness from his brow, and fingers, whose
light touch soothed him, parting his clotted hair. The features grew
more