hem it was from weariness, and instantly the
poignant pain in his forehead--the prophecy and menace of the bullet--
forced him to reopen them.

The tension of nerve and brain was too severe; nature came to his relief
with intervals of unconsciousness. Reviving from one of these he became
sensible of a sharp, smarting pain in his right hand, and when he worked
his fingers together, or rubbed his palm with them, he could feel that
they were wet and slippery. He could not see the hand, but he knew the
sensation; it was running blood. In his delirium he had beaten it
against the jagged fragments of the wreck, had clutched it full of
splinters. He resolved that he would meet his fate more manly. He was a
plain, common soldier, had no religion and not much philosophy; he could
not die like a hero, with great and wise last words, even if there had
been some one to hear them, but he could die "game," and he would. But
if he could only know when to expect the shot!

Some rats which had probably inhabited the shed came sneaking and
scampering about. One of them mounted the pile of debris that held the
rifle; another followed and another. Searing regarded them at first with
indifference, then with friendly interest; then, as the thought flashed
into his bewildered mind that they might touch the trigger of his rifle,
he cursed them and ordered them to go away. "It is no business of
yours," he cried.

The creatures went away; they would return later, attack his face, gnaw
away his nose, cut his throat--he knew that, but he hoped by that time
to be dead.

Nothing could now unfix his gaze from the little ring of metal with its
black interior. The pain in his forehead was fierce and incessant. He
felt it gradually penetrating the brain more and more deeply, until at
last its progress was arrested by the wood at the back of his head. It
grew momentarily more insufferable: he began wantonly beating his
lacerated hand against the splinters again to counteract that horrible
ache. It seemed to throb with a slow, regular recurrence, each pulsation
sharper than the preceding, and sometimes he cried out, thinking he felt
the fatal bullet. No thoughts of home, of wife and children, of country,
of glory. The whole record of memory was effaced. The world had passed
away--not a vestige remained. Here in this confusion of timbers and
boards is the sole universe. Here is immortality in time--each pain an
everlasting life. The throbs tick off ete