Page:The Story of Aunt Becky's Army-Life .djvu/144

108 making search for him, but not till after he died was made aware of the fact that I had been nursing him for a whole day, and had not known him.

He was such a sufferer that I forbade all unnecessary questions, and kept him as quiet as possible. He tried at the last to say something to me, but it was unintelligible, and he died with his unknown secret, himself unknown. I thought, perhaps, I could have received some sign if I had known him, and it was so hard to think of his dying thus, while I stood by his bed, and could not convey the message of the dying to those who loved him, and of whom his latest thoughts and words were spoken.

A small hospital was established nearer the river for those in government employ, when ours was over-crowded with the battle's unripe harvest, and Mrs. Dunbar, one of our best nurses, and my closest friend, went there to do duty. I was very lonely after she went, still I knew she would do more good in that position than any other one of whom I had knowledge, and remembered that I was not in the army for social enjoyment or the sweets of friendship, and so held my peace, wondering when the war would be over, and we could all go home out of the sight of wounds, and such painful deaths.

I thought of the ending that there would be thrills of regret at parting—heart-aches at the breaking of those ties so cemented by blood; but the nation and the nation's soldiers yearned for peace, and its pursuits, and so we waited patiently for the end.