The twenty-four hours
of his indescribable pain and torturing thirst were only broken by a few
hours of merciful delirium, when he was once more a boy and living his
simple, care-free life on the farm, or happy with Liddy. When found he
knew it not. When examined by a surgeon that stern man shook his head
and remarked: "Slim chance for you, poor devil--too much blood gone
already!"

For two weeks he was delirious most of the time, but his rugged
constitution saved him, and when he showed signs of gaining and could
be moved, he was taken to the hospital at Washington. Once there, he
began to fail again, for the long journey had been too much for him.

"He won't last long," said the doctor in charge to the nurse. "Better
ask him if there is any one he wishes to see."

When he made his rounds the next morning Manson was worse and again out
of his head. "He has been wandering in his mind all night," was the
nurse's report, "and he talks about fishing and catching things in
traps, and there is a girl mixed in it all. Case of sweetheart, I
guess."

That day the wounded boy rallied a little and began to think, and bit by
bit the sane hours of the past few weeks came back to him. How near to
the shores of eternal silence his bark had drifted, he little knew! The
long hours of agony on the battlefield since the moment he had
instinctively crawled behind a rock had been a delirium of despair
broken only by visions of vague and shadowy import that he could not
grasp. All that he thought was that death must soon end his misery, and
he hoped it might come soon. At times he had bitten and torn the sleeves
of his coat, soaked with blood from his shattered arm, or beaten his
head against the dry earth in his agony.

How long it had lasted he could not tell, and the last that he
remembered was looking at the moon, and then he seemed to be drifting
away and all pain ceased. Then all around him he could hear voices and
over his head a roof, and he felt as if awakened from some horrible
dream. With his well arm he felt of the other and found it was bound
with splints. The faces he could see were all strange, but the men wore
the familiar blue uniform and he knew they were not enemies. He was
carried to a freight-car and laid in it, where he took a long, jolting
ride that was all a torture, at the end of which he was taken in an open
wagon to a long, low building, and laid on one of many narrow cots which
were ranged in double rows. H