CHAPTER XVII.
A BATTLE SUNDAY.
In the dim of the morning of our Lord's Sabbath, the twenty-ninth of June, 1862, I sat in my saddle at Savage's. The gloom was very cheerless. A feeling of hopeless vagabondism oppressed me. I remembered the Disinherited Knight, the Wandering Jew, Robinson Crusoe, and other poor errants in the wide world, and wondered if any of them ever looked so ruefully as I, when the last wagon of the Grand Army disappeared through the shadow.
The tent had been taken down at midnight. I had been dozing in the saddle, with parched lips and throbbing temples, waiting for my comrade. Head-quarters had been intending to move, without doing it, for four hours, and he informed me that it was well to stay with the Commanding General, as the Commanding General kept out of danger, and also kept in provisions. I was sick and petulant, and finally quarrelled with my friend. He told me, quietly, that I would regret my harshness when I should be well again. I set off for White Oak, but repented at "Burnt Chimneys," and turned back. In the misty dawn I saw the maimed still lying on the ground, wrapped in relics of blankets, and in one of the outhouses a grim embalmer stood amid a family of nude corpses. He dealt with the bodies of high officers only; for, said he—
"I used to be glad to prepare private soldiers. They were wuth a five dollar bill apiece. But, Lord bless you, a Colonel pays a hundred, and a Brigadier-General two hundred. There's lots of them now, and I have cut the acquaintance of everything below a Major. I might," he added, "as a great favor, do a Captain, but he must pay a Major's price. I insist upon that! Such windfalls don't come every day. There won't be another such killing for a century."
A few horsemen of the escort loitered around head-quarters. All the tents but one had been removed, and the staff crouched sleepily upon the refuse straw. The rain began to drizzle at this time, and I unbuckled a blanket to wrap about my shoulders. Several people were lying upon dry places, here and there, and espying some planks a little remote, I tied my horse to a peach-tree, and stretched myself languidly upon my back. The bridal couch or the throne were never so soft as those knotty planks, and the drops that fell upon my forehead seemed to cool my fever.
I had passed into a sort of cognizant sleep when a harsh, loud, cruel voice awakened me, and I seemed to see a great Polyphemus, stretching his hands into the clouds, and gaping like an earthquake.
"Boy," I heard him say, to a slight figure, near at hand, "boy, what are you standing there for? What in —— do you want?"
"Nothing!"
"Take it, and go, —— —— you! Take it, and go!"