"With what result?"
"I alone am left to tell the tale."
"Oh, heavens! Corporal Diggs, it can not, it can not be true!"
"Alas! lady, it is but too true. Our brave army is now no more. I, wounded and hunted like a hare, have come to you for a few hours of peace and shelter."
Diggs endeavored to look the character of a wounded knight from Flodden Field.
"Pray, Corporal Diggs, tell me all; our cause is not, must not be lost. The South—but, pardon me, you are wounded, weak, and faint—"
Diggs had put one of his arms in a sling and had bound a bandage on his head.
"Sarah, bring wine here at once. Ah! you must have been very closely engaged with the enemy from the number of your wounds."
The wine was brought, and Diggs, now refreshed, gave eager Mrs. Juniper a glowing account of the battle at Carrick's Ford. As the account given by history does not, in all respects, agree with that of Corporal Diggs, we will give his version of the conflict.
"Madam," said the little corporal, "yesterday occurred one of the most bloody battles that the world has ever known. Our regiment joined General Garnett, and we met the enemy at Carrick's Ford, some seven hundred thousand strong, headed by old Abe Lincoln himself. They had a hundred to our one, but we fought, oh, my dear Mrs. Juniper, we fought like lions, like whirlwinds, like raging hurricanes—hem, hem"—broke off Corporal Diggs, trying to think of some stronger term, "yes, my dear Mrs. Juniper, like cyclones—hem, hem! We piled the ground around us several feet deep with their dead, and Cheat river overflowed its banks with the blood, but—hem, hem! it was no use. They came on, and their cannon shot, musket shot, and grape shot mowed men down. I—hem, hem—I was last to fall, I fought the whole of them for some time alone, but, surrounded, wounded, faint and bleeding, I fell from my horse and was left on the field for dead. When I came to my senses I—hem, hem!—crawled away and came here, believing that, wounded and faint as I was, you would not refuse me rest and shelter, and—and—hem, hem—I am very weak from loss of blood, Mrs. Juniper."