Page:The Story of Aunt Becky's Army-Life .djvu/98

64 a Northern winter stole into the camp of desponding men, and Washington saw the bloody tracks of his soldiers printed in the snow's white purity. They suffered for the same country which we loved, and bled in the same cause, counting it no loss if only the end should be peace.

My ward was over the amputation room, and never while I live, will I forget the groans which issued from that place. Heartrending cries for aid, when the surgeons stood with drops of sweat beading their brows—agonized over the pains which they could not alleviate. Oh it was horrible, and sickening to listen to them as we must at times.

Scarcely a building in Fredericksburg but bore the mark of hot shells, for both armies had turned their guns upon the doomed city; still every torn and shattered house held its quota of wounded men, and through the fissure where some screaming shell had penetrated in its fiery flight, the night-wind sighed sadly, and flared the dim lights which we carried, and the rain and mist beat through in the lonesome midnight.

The sound of the organ in the church which we occupied, when played by Miss Gilson, another efficient nurse, seemed like the spirits of another world chanting hymns of consolation to the poor troubled souls of this, as they lay, some in the delirium of fever, fighting again the hard-contested battle—some thinking sadly of homes which should be never more blessed by their presence, of wife and children, who in after years, when peace was reigning again, should