It was still dusky night, or lighted only by the moon, when Charlie, lying where we left him, began to surmise whether the morning sun would evermore gladden his eyes, that were staring upward at the stars, as they twinkled through the branches of those trees amid which the battle had been partly fought, and the stems of which, in places, were barked and whitened by the passing whirlwinds of shot from the mitrailleuses.
'If I die,' thought he, 'the label at my neck will tell the burial party who I am—or was.'
And as the slow hours of the night stole on, he thought of the ghastly face of the French captain who killed the young ensign Donnersberg, and the peculiar hatred and inhumanity expressed by his dying wish. The sound of wheels coming slowly along now roused him. A party of the Krankentrager, picking up the wounded, were passing near. He tried to call aloud, but his voice had failed him.
'How high the moon is to-night,' said one.
'How bright, you mean; for I don't suppose she is higher up than usual,' replied another.
'But it would be a lovely night for having another turn with the French schelms, in their long blue coats and red kepis.'
'There has been slaughter enough, for one day, Rudiger; ugh!—how thick the corpses lie here, where the horrible mitrailleuses have been playing.'
The waggon was stopped, and the soldiers looked about them.
Suddenly one said—
'There is young Herr Pierrepont, the Englander of the 95th. How in his heart he loved the crack of the zundnadelgewehr, or the click of steel on steel! So he is gone, too!'