d
upon the ground under a tree and remained there until night, when I was
put with others into an ambulance and taken to some station on some
railroad--I have never known what station or what road. The journey was
painful. I was in the upper story of the ambulance. We jolted over rough
roads, halting frequently because the long train filled the road ahead.
The men in the lower story were badly wounded, groaning, and begging for
this or that. I did not know their voices; they were not of our company.
But some time in the night I learned somehow--I suppose by his companion
calling his name--that one of the men below me was named Virgil Harley.
Harley? I thought--Virgil Harley? Why, I knew that name once! Surely I
knew that name in South Carolina! And I would have spoken, but was made
aware that Virgil Harley was wounded unto death. When we reached the
railroad, I was taken out and lifted into a car, I asked about Virgil
Harley. "He is dead," was the answer.

Then I felt more than ever alone because of this slightest opportunity,
now lost forever. Virgil Harley might have been able to tell me of
myself. He was dead. I had not even seen him. I had but heard his voice
in groans that ended in the death-rattle.

XXVI

A BROKEN MUSKET

"What seest thou else
In the dark backward and abysm of time?
If thou remember'st ought, ere thou cam'st here,
How thou cam'st here, thou may'st."--SHAKESPEARE.

When the train of wounded arrived in Richmond, it was early morning.
Many men and women had forsaken their beds to minister unto the needs of
the suffering; delicacies were served bountifully, and hearts as well as
stomachs were cheered; there were evidences of sympathy and honour on
every hand.

Late in the forenoon I was taken to Byrd Island Hospital--an old
tobacco factory now turned into something far different. My clothing was
cut from me and taken away. Then my wound--full of dirt and even
worms--was carefully dressed. The next morning the nurse brought me the
contents of my pockets. She gave me, among the rest, a marble and a
flattened musket-ball, which, she had found in the watch-pocket of my
trousers. Now I recalled that I had put my "taw" in that pocket; the
bullet had struck the marble, which had saved me from a serious if not
fatal wound.

The ward in which I found myself contained perhaps a hundred wounded
men, not one of whom I knew, though there were a few belon