ver until I
touched the wound. The ball had passed from left to right through the
left biceps, and directly through the right arm just below the shoulder,
emerging behind. The right hand and forearm were cold and perfectly
insensible. I pinched them as well as I could, to test the amount of
sensation remaining; but the hand might as well have been that of a dead
man. I began to understand that the nerves had been wounded, and that
the part was utterly powerless. By this time my friends had pretty well
divided the spoils, and, rising together, went out. The old woman then
came to me and said, "Reckon you'd best git up. Theyuns is agoin' to
take you away." To this I only answered, "Water, water." I had a grim
sense of amusement on finding that the old woman was not deaf, for she
went out, and presently came back with a gourdful, which I eagerly
drank. An hour later the Graybacks returned, and, finding that I was too
weak to walk, carried me out, and laid me on the bottom of a common
cart, with which they set off on a trot. The jolting was horrible, but
within an hour I began to have in my dead right hand a strange burning,
which was rather a relief to me. It increased as the sun rose and the
day grew warm, until I felt as if the hand was caught and pinched in a
red-hot vice. Then in my agony I begged my guard for water to wet it
with, but for some reason they desired silence, and at every noise
threatened me with a revolver. At length the pain became absolutely
unendurable, and I grew what it is the fashion to call demoralized. I
screamed, cried, and yelled in my torture, until, as I suppose, my
captors became alarmed, and, stopping, gave me a handkerchief,--my own,
I fancy,--and a canteen of water, with which I wetted the hand, to my
unspeakable relief.

It is unnecessary to detail the events by which, finally, I found myself
in one of the Rebel hospitals near Atlanta. Here, for the first time, my
wounds were properly cleansed and dressed by a Dr. Oliver Wilson, who
treated me throughout with great kindness. I told him I had been a
doctor; which, perhaps, may have been in part the cause of the unusual
tenderness with which I was managed. The left arm was now quite easy;
although, as will be seen, it never entirely healed. The right arm was
worse than ever,--the humerus broken, the nerves wounded, and the hand
only alive to pain. I use this phrase because it is connected in my mind
with a visit from a local visitor,--I am