prayers, no tears, as the dead-carts went the
rounds. But the prayers had been said, and the tears had fallen, while
the poor fellows were still alive in the pens yonder; and when at last
death came, it was like a release. They suffered long; and I for one
believe that therefore shall their rest be long--long and sweet."

After a time began the rain, the soft, persistent, gray rain of the
Southern lowlands, and he staid within and copied another thousand names
into the ledger. He would not allow himself the companionship of a dog
lest the creature should bark at night and disturb the quiet. There was
no one to hear save himself, and it would have been a friendly sound as
he lay awake on his narrow iron bed, but it seemed to him against the
spirit of the place. He would not smoke, although he had the soldier's
fondness for a pipe. Many a dreary evening, beneath a hastily built
shelter of boughs, when the rain poured down and everything was
comfortless, he had found solace in the curling smoke; but now it seemed
to him that it would be incongruous, and at times he almost felt as if
it would be selfish too. "_They_ can not smoke, you know, down there
under the wet grass," he thought, as standing at the window he looked
toward the ranks of the mounds stretching across the eastern end from
side to side--"my parade-ground," he called it. And then he would smile
at his own fancies, draw the curtain, shut out the rain and the night,
light his lamp, and go to work on the ledgers again. Some of the names
lingered in his memory; he felt as if he had known the men who bore
them, as if they had been boys together, and were friends even now
although separated for a time. "James Marvin, Company B, Fifth Maine.
The Fifth Maine was in the seven days' battle. I say, do you remember
that retreat down the Quaker church road, and the way Phil Kearney held
the rear-guard firm?" And over the whole seven days he wandered with his
mute friend, who remembered everything and everybody in the most
satisfactory way. One of the little head-boards in the parade-ground
attracted him peculiarly because the name inscribed was his own: "----
Rodman, Company A, One Hundred and Sixth New York."

"I remember that regiment; it came from the extreme northern part of the
State. Blank Rodman must have melted down here, coming as he did from
the half-arctic region along the St. Lawrence. I wonder what he thought
of the first hot day, say in South Carolina, along