Page:The Story of Aunt Becky's Army-Life .djvu/101

Rh I was so indignant at his meanness, that I would have given him a harder thrust than I did, if I had known him at the time. Having fallen in love with a "secesh girl," who owned a lot of lumber, he had taken the men, sent by the surgeon to make it into hospital bunks, to the guard-house, and set a strict watch over the lot, and our boys lay on the floor to satisfy his selfishness.

The old German soldier to whom I had pointed, wishing the Provost Marshal in his place, was an intense sufferer—his wound through his lungs compelling him to sit upright at all times. He leaned against a pillar of the building, his gray, tangled hair fluttering in the wind, and I was reminded of saints and martyrs hourly, as I looked his way. He talked much of those whom he had left, how hard it would be for them to think he should never come home, when the war was over. All he ate I fed him in lemonade, with a teaspoon.

He died in great agony, after suffering days of untold misery, and death seemed a welcome release.

Oh, if the cruel shots could only kill at once—but this terrible mutilation, when the soul is almost let out of the gaping wounds, and struggles with the full strength of manhood, till faint and weary—weak with the deluge of blood, which has drained the fountain, the cold hand of dissolution clutches at the heart, and the soul goes forth from the torn body, leaving it a poor lump of festering flesh, on which the worms may banquet at will!