"Are you hit?" said Haskell, who was directing stretcher-bearers and sending prisoners to the rear.
"Not badly." He was giddy and in great pain. Then he was aware of the anxious face of Josiah.
"My God! you hurt, sir? Come to look for you—can you ride? I fetched
Dixy—mare's killed."
"I am not badly hurt. Tighten this handkerchief and give me your arm—I can't ride,"
He arose, and amazed at his weakness, dragged himself down the slope, through the reforming lines, the thousands of prisoners, the reinforcing cannon and the wreckage of the hillside. He fell on his couch, and more at ease began to think, with some difficulty in controlling his thoughts. At last he said, "I shall be up to-morrow," and lay still, seeing, as the late afternoon went by, Grey Pine and Ann Penhallow. Then he was aware of Captain Haskell and a surgeon, who dressed his wound and said, "It was mere shock—there is no fracture. The ball cut the artery and tore the scalp. You'll be all right in a day or two."
Penhallow said, "Please to direct my servant to the Sanitary Commission.
I think my friend, the Rev. Mark Rivers, is with them."
He slept none. It was early dawn when Rivers came in anxious and troubled. For the first time in years of acquaintance he found Penhallow depressed, and amazed because so small a wound made him weak and unable to think clearly or to give orders. "And it was some stupid boy from our line," he said.
His incapacity made Rivers uneasy, and although Penhallow broke out to his surprise in angry remonstrance, he convinced him at last that he must return to Grey Pine on sick leave. He asked no question about the army. Insisting that he was too well to give up his command, nevertheless he talked much of headache and lack of bodily power. He was, as Rivers saw, no longer the good-humoured, quiet gentleman, with no thought of self. In a week he was stronger, but as his watchful friend realized, there was something mysteriously wrong with his mental and moral mechanism.
On the day after the battle Penhallow asked to have his wife telegraphed that he was slightly wounded, and that she must not come to him. Rivers wrote also a brief and guarded letter to Leila of their early return to Grey Pine.
In a vain effort to interest the colonel, he told him of the surrender of Vicksburg.—He asked where it was and wasn't John there, but somewhat later became more clear-minded and eager to go home.