studied,--were here
going forward on every side; the horrible preparations moved from bed to
bed with a rapidity which showed that where suffering so abounded
there was no time for sympathy; and the surgeons, with arms bare to the
shoulder and bedaubed with blood, toiled away as though life no longer
moved in the creeping flesh beneath the knife, and human agony spoke not
aloud with every motion of their hand.

"Place there! move forward!" said an hospital surgeon, as they carried
up the litter on which Pioche lay stretched and senseless.

"What's this?" cried a surgeon, leaning forward, and placing his hand on
the sick man's pulse. "Ah! take him back again; it 's all over there!"

"Oh, no!" cried I, in agony, "it can scarcely be; they lifted him alive
from the wagon."

"He's not dead, sir," replied the surgeon, in a whisper, "but he will
soon be; there's internal bleeding going on from that wound, and a few
hours, or less perhaps must close the scene."

"Can nothing be done? nothing?"

"I fear not." He opened the jacket of the wounded man as he spoke, and
slitting the inner clothes asunder with a quick stroke of his scissors,
disclosed a tremendous sabre-wound in the side. "That is not the worst,"
said he. "Look here," pointing to a small bluish mark of a bullet hole
above it; "here lies the mischief."

An hospital aid whispered something at the instant in the surgeon's ear,
to which he quickly replied, "When?"

"This instant, sir; the ligature slipped, and--"

"Remove him," was the reply. "Now, sir, I have a bed for your poor
fellow here; but I have little hope to give you. His pulse is stronger,
otherwise the endeavor would be lost time."

While they carried the litter forward, I perceived that another party
were lifting from a bed near a figure, over whose face the sheet was
carelessly thrown. I guessed from the gestures that the form they lifted
was lifeless; the heavy sumph of the body upon the ground showed it
beyond a doubt. The bearers replaced the dead man by the dying body of
poor Pioche; and from a vague feeling of curiosity, I stooped down and
drew back the sheet from the face of the corpse. As I did so, my limbs
trembled, and I leaned back almost fainting against the wall. Pale with
the pallor of death, but scarcely altered from life, I beheld the dead
features of Amedee Pichot, the captain whose insolence had left an
unsettled quarrel between us. The man for whose coming I waited to
expiate an