he dusty blue columns plodding
forward toward the firing line; and at last a white hospital tent
glimmered under the trees, and the slow mule team turned into a
leafy lane and halted in the rear of a line of ambulances which
were all busily discharging their mangled burdens. The cries of
the wounded were terrible.

Operating tables stood under the trees in the open air; assistants
sponged the blood from them continually; the overworked surgeons,
stripped to their undershirts, smeared with blood, worked coolly
and rapidly in the shade of the oak-trees, seldom raising their
voices, never impatient. Orderlies brought water in artillery
buckets; ward-masters passed swiftly to and fro; a soldier stood by
a pile of severed limbs passing out bandages to assistants who
swarmed around, scurrying hither and thither under the quiet orders
of the medical directors.

A stretcher was brought; Colonel Arran opened his heavy lids as
they placed him in it. His eyes summoned Berkley.

"It's all right," he said in the ghost of a voice. "Whichever way
it turns put, it's all right. . . I've tried to live
lawfully. . . . It is better to live mercifully. I think--she--would
forgive. . . . Will you?"

"Yes."

He bent and took the wounded man's hand, in his.

"If I knew--if I _knew_--" he said, and his burning eyes searched
the bloodless face beneath him.

"God?" he whispered--"if it were true----"

A surgeon shouldered him aside, glanced sharply at the patient,
motioned the bearers forward.

Berkley sat down by the roadside, bridle in hand, head bowed in his
arms. Beside him his horse fed quietly on the weeds. In his ears
rang the cries of the wounded; all around him he was conscious of
people passing to and fro; and he sat there, face covered, deadly
tired, already exhausted to a stolidity that verged on stupor.

He must have slept, too, because when he sat up and opened his eyes
again it was nearly sundown, and somebody had stolen his horse.

A zouave with a badly sprained ankle, lying on a blanket near him,
offered him bread and meat that stank; and Berkley ate it, striving
to collect his deadened thoughts. After he had eaten he filled the
zouave's canteen at a little rivulet where hundreds of soldiers
were kneeling to drink or dip up the cool, clear water.

"What's your reg'ment, friend?" asked the man.

"Eighth New York Lancers."

"Lord A'mighty! You boys did get cut up some, didn't you?"

"I guess so. Ar