_J. T. Trowbridge._

THE LITTLE PRISONER.

PART I.

ON THE BATTLE-GROUND.

We--grandma, "our young folks," and I--live up here among the hills, in
a quaint, old-fashioned farm-house,--older than any of the "old folks"
now living; and every day, when the sun goes down, we gather around the
great wood fire in the sitting-room, and talk and tell stories by the
hour together. I tell the most of the stories; for, though I am only a
plain farmer, going about in a slouched hat, a rusty coat, and a pair of
pantaloons so old and threadbare that you would not wear them if you
were in the ash business, I have mingled with men, seen a great many
places, and been almost all over the world.

My own children like my stories, because they think they are true, and
because they are all about the men I have met, and the places I have
seen, and so give them some glimpses of what is going on in the busy
life outside of our quiet country home; but I do not expect other young
folks to like them as well as my own do,--for their own father will not
tell them. However, I am going to write out a few of the many I know, in
the hope that they may give some trifling pleasure and instruction to
boys and girls I have never seen, and who gather of evenings around
firesides far away from the one where all my stories are first told.

As I sit down to write by this bright, blazing fire, the clouds are
scudding across the moon, and the wind is moaning around the old house,
shaking the doors, and rattling the windows, and snapping the branches
of the great trees as if a whole regiment of young giants were cracking
their whips in the court-yard. On just such a night a wounded boy lay
out on the Wilderness battle-ground!

You have heard of that great battle; how two hundred thousand men met in
a dense forest, and for two long days and nights, over wooded hills, and
through tangled valleys, and deep, rocky ravines, surged against each
other like angry waves in a storm. And you have heard, too--what is very
pitiful to hear--how, when that bloody storm was over, and the sun came
out, dim and cold, on the cheerless May morning which followed, thirty
thousand men--every one the father, brother, or friend of some young
folks at home--lay dead and dying on that awful field. Amid such a host
of dead and dying men, you might overlook one little boy, who, all that
starless Friday night, lay there wounded in the Wilderness. I do not
w