life, I threw off my saber and my tight uniform-coat, gave my
pistols to a cavalryman near by, and started in search of another
horse. General Breckenridge had told me in the morning, if my horse
was killed to take the first unemployed one I could find. I knew
where some of the infantry field-officers had tied their horses in a
ravine in the rear, and while seeking them, I met a scene which
lives in my memory as if it were but yesterday.

I had just filled my canteen at a spring, and as I turned from it my
eye met the uplifted gaze of a Federal officer, I think a colonel of
an Illinois regiment, who was lying desperately wounded, shot
through the body and both legs, his dead horse lying on one of his
shattered limbs. A cannon-ball had passed through his horse and both
of his own knees. He looked pleadingly for a drink, but hesitated to
ask it of an enemy, as he supposed me to be. I came up to him, and
said, "You seem to be badly wounded, sir; will you have some water?"

"Oh, yes," said he; "but I feared to ask you for it."

"Why?"

"Because I expected no favor of an enemy."

Two other men coming by, I called them to aid in removing the dead
horse from his wounded limb. They did so, and then passed on; but I
seemed bound to him as by a spell. His manly face and soldierly
bearing, when suffering so terribly, charmed me. I changed his
position, adjusted his head, arranged his mangled legs in an easy
posture, supporting them by leaves stuffed under the blanket on
which we had laid him. In the mean time he took out his watch and