take, and I was thankful that I happened there at the right moment to see
that he was well narcotized for the night. Was it possible that my
Captain could be lying on the straw in one of these places? Certainly
possible, but not probable; but as the lantern was held over each bed, it
was with a kind of thrill that I looked upon the features it illuminated.
Many times as I went from hospital to hospital in my wanderings, I
started as some faint resemblance,-the shade of a young man's hair, the
outline of his half-turned face,--recalled the presence I was in search
of. The face would turn towards me, and the momentary illusion would
pass away, but still the fancy clung to me. There was no figure huddled
up on its rude couch, none stretched at the roadside, none toiling
languidly along the dusty pike, none passing in car or in ambulance, that
I did not scrutinize, as if it might be that for which I was making my
pilgrimage to the battlefield.

"There are two wounded Secesh," said my companion. I walked to the
bedside of the first, who was an officer, a lieutenant, if I remember
right, from North Carolina. He was of good family, son of a judge in one
of the higher courts of his State, educated, pleasant, gentle,
intelligent. One moment's intercourse with such an enemy, lying helpless
and wounded among strangers, takes away all personal bitterness towards
those with whom we or our children have been but a few hours before in
deadly strife. The basest lie which the murderous contrivers of this
Rebellion have told is that which tries to make out a difference of race
in the men of the North and South. It would be worth a year of battles to
abolish this delusion, though the great sponge of war that wiped it out
were moistened with the best blood of the land. My Rebel was of slight,
scholastic habit, and spoke as one accustomed to tread carefully among
the parts of speech. It made my heart ache to see him, a man finished in
the humanities and Christian culture, whom the sin of his forefathers and