four miles
ahead. But my powers of endurance, though remarkable, were
exhausted, and I dismounted at a deserted cabin by the wayside,
scarce able to drag myself to the doorway. Here a surgeon was
tending some wounded men who had been sent off the field at an early
hour of the first day. To his question, "Are you wounded?" I
replied that my wound was slight, and that I needed refreshment and
sleep more than surgical aid. Procuring two hard crackers and a cup
of rye Coffee, I made a better meal than I had eaten in three days,
and then lay down in a vacant room and slept.

When I awoke it was broad daylight, and the room was crowded full of
wounded and dying men, so thickly packed that I could hardly stir. I
was not in the same place where I had lain down; but of my change of
place, and of the dreadful scenes which had occurred during the
night, I had not the slightest knowledge.

As I became fully awake and sat up, the surgeon turned to me, and
said, "Well, you are alive at last. I thought nothing but an
earthquake would wake you. We have moved you about like a log, and
you never groaned or showed any signs of life. Men have trampled on
you, dying men have groaned all around you, and yet you slept as
soundly as a babe in its cradle. Where is your wound?"

How I endured the horrors of that night, rather how I was entirely
unconscious of them and slept refreshingly through them, is to me a
mystery. But so it was, and it seemed to be the turning-point of my
knee-wound, as it has never troubled me so much since.

I now rode on to Corinth, where I changed clothes, had a bath and
breakfast, and found a hospital and a surgeon. He decided that I was
unfit for duty, and must take my place among the invalids. After
dressing my wounds he advised rest. I slept again for six hours, and
woke in the afternoon almost a well man, as I thought.

Thus ended my courier service, and I then resolved that no earthly
power should ever force me into another battle against the
Government under which I was born; and I have kept my resolution.

General Beauregard's official dispatch of the second day's battle,
given below, was a very neat attempt to cover up defeat. It
expresses the general opinion of the people in the South as to the
battle of Pittsburg Landing.

"CORINTH, Tuesday, April 8, 1862.

"To the SECRETARY OF WAR, Richmond:

"We have gained a great and glorious victory. Eight to ten thousand
prisoners,