"Did you find Willing?"
"He's the man with his head tied up, there by the tree."
"Where's the colonel?"
"Over yonder."
Private Christy saluted the colonel and stood waiting. The colonel had a map spread out on his knee; on it he was tracing with his finger the path to the west which had been laid out for him. It was evident from the colonel's eyes that he, too, had passed a sleepless night. Presently he looked up at Private Christy, and with a nod gave him permission to speak.
"There's a prisoner in the woods, sir, by the name of Willing. This is his grandfather's place, and his leetle sister's up there in the house. She's worked bakin' and nursin' till she's almost dead on her feet. She's a sweet leetle gal, sir. Could you leave her brother here? She's far from home and alone."
The colonel looked absently at Private Christy. Private Christy seldom asked favors; moreover, if it had not been for his self-assigned work, Private Christy might long ago have been at his home in Georgia.
"I'll see, Christy," he said, and returned to his map.
Six o'clock passed, seven o'clock, eight o'clock, and now the great wounded army seemed to breathe deeply and to turn a little and to think about rising. It was beaten, sore, but it could not pause here. It was still in the country of its enemy; it must be up and away lest worse harm befall it. Opposite lay the victor, who, although wounded also, was better furnished with the munitions of war. The beaten army must set forth on the weary way by which it had come.
All the forenoon men were marching. From the woods near by, wagons, rough, springless and uncovered, drawn by thin, jaded horses, approached over the fields to the doors of farmhouses and barns. Into them were lifted the wounded from the houses and from the open fields. They were not lifted carefully; there was not time to be careful. Across the fields toward the west to the nearest road the wagons went and took their places in the great line.