"Are you much hurt? Can't you speak to me?"
She opened her eyes, and staring at the sentinel with a wild, crazed look, only moaned,—
"Oh! don't! Don't,—any more! Let me die! Oh! let me die!"
"Not yet. You are too young to die yet. Come, see if you can't sit up."
Something, it may have been the tone of my voice, seemed to bring her to her senses, for she again opened her eyes, and, with a sudden effort, rose nearly to her feet. In a moment, however, she staggered back, and would have fallen, had not the sentinel caught her.
"There, don't try again. Rest awhile. Take some of this,—it will give you strength"; and I emptied my brandy-flask into her mouth. "Our General" had filled it the morning we set out from his camp; but two days' acquaintance with the Judge, who declared "such brandy contraband of war," had reduced its contents to a low ebb. Still, there was enough to do that poor girl a world of good. She shortly revived, and sitting up, her head against the sentinel's shoulder, told us her story. She was a white woman, and served as nursery-maid in a family that lived hard by. All of its male members being away with the array, she had been sent out at that late hour to procure medicine for a sick child, and, waylaid by a gang of black fiends, had been gagged and outraged in the very heart of Richmond! And this is Southern civilization under Jefferson I.!
At the end of a long hour, I returned to the hotel. The sentry was pacing to and fro before it, and, seating myself on the door-step, I drew him into conversation.
"Do such things often happen in Richmond?" I asked him.
"Often! Ye's strange yere, I reckon," he replied.
"No,—I've been here forty times, but not lately. Things must be in a bad way here, now."