Page:The Story of Aunt Becky's Army-Life .djvu/110

76 the boys drove crotched sticks into the earth, and nailed barrel staves over the cross pieces, and over these we spread straw, and slept very comfortably indeed.

Getting desperately hungry one day, two of us started off on a foraging expedition; I in search of mush and milk. We reached a hut occupied by a colored family, and asking for the desired article of food, knowing it to be staple in such places, mine was given me in a tin wash-basin, while my companion received hers in a great yellow dish of antique mould. Nevertheless, we thought it worth a half dollar each, and departed with our hunger appeased in a wonderful degree.

The tent in which the colored wounded were, seemed to fall in my line of duty, and I found within it ten ill with fever and wounds. One little fellow only thirteen years of age, who had been waiter for a captain, and had lost a foot, bore his sufferings with the heroism of a man.

Not even a groan escaped his lips, and the only words which betokened his sorrow were, "What will my poor mother do now?" So young, with the stain of Africa upon his cheek and brow, he would have a hard world with its mountains of prejudice to surmount, and crippled in body as he was, I sighed for his future fate.