It was a great victory for the South, but a few more such victories and there would be none of her brave boys left to tell the story.
John Vaughan's company had been detailed to help in cleaning the field. The day before, on Sunday morning, they had eaten their breakfast seated on the ground among hundreds of dead bodies whose odor poisoned the air. It is needless to say, Julius was not present. He had kept the river between him and the roar of contending hosts.
The suffering of the wounded had been terrible. Some of them had fallen on Friday, thousands on Saturday, and it was now Monday. All through the blood-soaked tangled woods they lay groaning and dying. And everywhere the flap of black wings. The keen-eyed vultures had seen from the sky where they fell.
John found a brave old farmer from Northern New York lying beside his son. He had met them in the fight at Fredericksburg in December.
"Well, here we are, Vaughan," the father cried feebly. "My boy's dead, and I'll be with him soon—but it's all right—it's all right—my country's worth it!"
They were lying in a bright open space, where the warm sun of May had pushed the wood violets into blossom in rich profusion. The dead boy's head lay in a bed of blue flowers.
Some of the bodies further on were black and charred by the flames that had swept the woods again and again during the battles. Some of them had been wounded men and they had been burned to death. Their twisted bodies and the agony on their cold faces told the hideous story more plainly than words. The odor of burning flesh still filled the air in these black spots.
With a start John suddenly came on the crouching figure of a Confederate soldier kneeling behind a stump, the paper end of the cartridge was in his teeth and his fingers still grasped the ball. He was just in the act of tearing the paper as a bullet crashed straight through his forehead. A dark streak of blood marked his face and clothes. His gun was in his other hand, the muzzle in place to receive the cartridge, the body cold and rigid in exactly the position death had called him.
A broad-shouldered, bearded man in blue had just fallen asleep nearby. The body was still warm, the blue eyes wide open, staring into the leaden sky. On his breast lay an open Bible with a bloody finger mark on the lines:
"The Lord is my shepherd,
I shall not want
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures—
He restoreth my soul."