me all last night, and it will haunt me as long as I live."

CHAPTER XVI.

THE GRASP OF DEATH.

When the fierce heat of E Company's second summer in an almost tropical
climate was fast depleting their ranks, Manson wrote to Liddy:

"Disease among us is more dangerous than rebel bullets. When I was a boy
I used to feel that the long, hot hours in hay fields, or the bitter
cold ones in the snow-buried woods, were severe hardships, but now I
thank God for them! If I survive the exposure here it will be because of
the splendid health and strength that came to me from those days on the
farm. Sometimes when the miserable food I have to eat, or the vile water
I must drink, is at its worst, I think of what mother used to cook, and
how sweet the water in dear old Ragged Brook used to taste on a hot
summer day, and you cannot imagine what I would give for a chance to
thrust my face into that cool stream, where it was leaping over a mossy
ledge, and drink my fill.

"I have passed through some ghastly and sickening experiences, too
horrible to relate to you, and at times I am so depressed that I lose
all hope, and then again I feel that I shall pull through all right. One
thing I want you to do, and that is, forget the foolish promise I
exacted from you that day on Blue Hill. Some things have occurred that
have convinced me it was doing you a cruel injustice to ask such a
promise."

It was the last letter Liddy ever received from her soldier boy, and
when she read it it filled her with a new and uncanny dread.

During those first two years of service, E Company made heroic history.
They took part in eleven hard-fought battles, besides many skirmishes,
and not a man flinched or shirked a duty! They were all hardy sons of
old New England, who, like their forefathers of '76, fought for home and
liberty; for freedom and love of country. Such, and such only, are true
heroes!

Of the battles in which they took part, now famous in history,
Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Tracy City, Resaca, Peach Creek and
Atlanta were the most severe, though many others were as sanguinary.
Their losses in all these engagements were sixteen officers, killed or
wounded in battle, and twenty-three privates, or total of thirty-nine.
In addition, eight were taken prisoners, most of whom died in rebel
prison pens; and thirty-six others died of disease or were disabled by
it. Out of the one hundred hardy men who left Southton, only nineteen
re