ickford!! How do you feel?"

The eyes did not unclose, but the lips opened slowly, and said with a
painful effort:

"F-i-r-s-t R-a-t-e!"

This scene was repeated every morning for over a week. Every day the
Rebel Surgeon would insist that the man should betaken out, and every
morning Bickford would gasp out with troublesome exertion that he felt:

"F-i-r-s-t R-a-t-e!"

It ended one morning by his inability, to make his usual answer, and then
he was carried out to join the two score others being loaded into the
wagon.

CHAPTER LXXIV.

NEW YEAR'S DAY--DEATH OF JOHN H. WINDER--HE DIES ON HIS WAY TO A DINNER
--SOMETHING AS TO CHARACTER AND CAREER--ONE OF THE WORST MEN THAT EVER
LIVED.

On New Year's Day we were startled by the information that our old-time
enemy--General John H. Winder--was dead. It seemed that the Rebel Sutler
of the Post had prepared in his tent a grand New Year's dinner to which
all the officers were invited. Just as Winder bent his head to enter the
tent he fell, and expired shortly after. The boys said it was a clear
case of Death by Visitation of the Devil, and it was always insisted that
his last words were:

"My faith is in Christ; I expect to be saved. Be sure and cut down the
prisoners' rations."

Thus passed away the chief evil genius of the Prisoners-of-War. American
history has no other character approaching his in vileness. I doubt if
the history of the world can show another man, so insignificant in
abilities and position, at whose door can be laid such a terrible load of
human misery. There have been many great conquerors and warriors who
have

Waded through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

but they were great men, with great objects, with grand plans to carry
out, whose benefits they thought would be more than an equivalent for the
suffering they caused. The misery they inflicted was not the motive of
their schemes, but an unpleasant incident, and usually the sufferers were
men of other races and religions, for whom sympathy had been dulled by
long antagonism.

But Winder was an obscure, dull old man--the commonplace descendant of a
pseudo-aristocrat whose cowardly incompetence had once cost us the loss
of our National Capital. More prudent than his runaway father, he held
himself aloof from the field; his father had lost reputation and almost
his commission, by coming into contact with the enemy; he wou