il by Colonel Sherman had effectually cut off all
trace of his movements after the battle began.

Mrs. Sprague's tears were falling softly as the orderly led them to the
surgeon's office. They were there shown the records of all who had been
buried on the field. Many, he informed them, sympathetically, had been
buried where they fell, in great ditches dug by the sappers. In every
case the garments had been stripped from the bodies before burial, so
that there was absolutely no means of identification. Most of the
wounded had, however, been sent to Richmond with the prisoners. "It
would not do," he added, kindly, "to give up all hope of the lost ones,
until they had seen the roster of the prisoners and the wounded in the
Richmond prisons and hospitals."

Quarters were given to them in a tent put at their disposal by the
surgeons, and in the long, wakeful hours of the night Olympia heard the
guard pacing monotonously before the door. The music of the bugles
aroused them at sunrise--a wan, haggard group, sad-eyed and silent. The
girl made desperate efforts to cheer the wretched mother, and even
privily took Merry to task for giving way before what was as yet but a
shadow. 'Twould be time enough for tears when they found evidence that
the stout, vigorous boys had been killed. As they finished the very
plain breakfast of half-baked bread, pea-coffee, and eggs, bought by the
orderly at an exorbitant rate, he said, good-naturedly:

"The train don't come till about ten o'clock. If you'd like to see the
battle-field, I can get the ambulance and take you over."

Olympia eagerly assented--anything was preferable to this mute misery of
her mother and Merry's sepulchral struggles to be conversational and
tearless. They drove through bewildering numbers of tents, most of them,
Olympia's sharp eyes noted, marked "U.S.A.," and she reflected, almost
angrily, that the chief part of war, after all, was pillage. The men
looked shabby, and the uniforms were as varied as a carnival, though by
no means so gay. Whenever they crossed a stream, which was not seldom,
groups of men were standing in the water to their middle, washing their
clothing, very much as Olympia had seen the washer-women on the
Continent, in Europe. They were very merry, even boisterous in this
unaccustomed work, responding to rough jests by resounding slashes of
the tightly wrung garments upon the heads or backs of the unwary wags.

"Why, there must be a million men he