the steady current of the
maimed.

One of the wounded men had a shoeful of blood. He hopped like a
schoolboy in a game. He was laughing hysterically.

One was swearing that he had been shot in the arm through the
commanding general's mismanagement of the army. One was marching with
an air imitative of some sublime drum major. Upon his features was an
unholy mixture of merriment and agony. As he marched he sang a bit of
doggerel in a high and quavering voice:

"Sing a song 'a vic'try,
A pocketful 'a bullets,
Five an' twenty dead men
Baked in a--pie."

Parts of the procession limped and staggered to this tune.

Another had the gray seal of death already upon his face. His lips
were curled in hard lines and his teeth were clinched. His hands were
bloody from where he had pressed them upon his wound. He seemed to be
awaiting the moment when he should pitch headlong. He stalked like the
specter of a soldier, his eyes burning with the power of a stare into
the unknown.

There were some who proceeded sullenly, full of anger at their wounds,
and ready to turn upon anything as an obscure cause.

An officer was carried along by two privates. He was peevish. "Don't
joggle so, Johnson, yeh fool," he cried. "Think m' leg is made of
iron? If yeh can't carry me decent, put me down an' let some one else
do it."

He bellowed at the tottering crowd who blocked the quick march of his
bearers. "Say, make way there, can't yeh? Make way, dickens take it
all."

They sulkily parted and went to the roadsides. As he was carried past
they made pert remarks to him. When he raged in reply and threatened
them, they told him to be damned.

The shoulder of one of the tramping bearers knocked heavily against the
spectral soldier who was staring into the unknown.

The youth joined this crowd and marched along with it. The torn bodies
expressed the awful machinery in which the men had been entangled.

Orderlies and couriers occasionally broke through the throng in the
roadway, scattering wounded men right and left, galloping on followed
by howls. The melancholy march was continually disturbed by the
messengers, and sometimes by bustling batteries that came swinging and
thumping down upon them, the officers shouting orders to clear the way.

There was a tattered man, fouled with dust, blood and powder stain from
hair to shoes, who trudged quietly at the youth's side. He was
listening with eagerness and muc