“The war’s not over,” said Berkley indifferently.  Then he got up, painfully, from the grass, exchanged adieux with the zouave, and wandered off toward the hospital to seek for news of Colonel Arran.

It appeared that the surgeons had operated, and had sent the Colonel a mile farther to the rear, where a temporary hospital had been established in a young ladies’ seminary.  And toward this Berkley set out across the fields, the sound of the battle dinning heavily in his aching cars.

As he walked he kept a sullen eye out for his stolen horse, never expecting to see him, and it was with a savage mixture of surprise and satisfaction that he beheld him, bestridden by two dirty malingerers from a New York infantry regiment who rode on the snaffle with difficulty and objurgations and reproached each other for their mutual discomfort.

How they had escaped the Provost he did not know; how they escaped absolute annihilation they did not comprehend; for Berkley seized the bridle, swung the horse sharply, turning them both out of the saddle; then, delivering a swift kick apiece, as they lay cursing, he mounted and rode forward amid enthusiastic approval from the drivers of passing army waggons.

Long since the towering smoke in the west had veiled the sun; and now the sky had become gray and thick, and already a fine drizzling rain was falling, turning the red dust to grease.

Slipping, floundering, his horse bore him on under darkening skies; rain fell heavily now; he bared his hot head to it; raised his face, masked with grime, and let the drops fall on the dark scar that burned under the shifting bandage.

In the gathering gloom eastward he saw the horizon redden and darken and redden with the cannon flashes; the immense battle rumour filled his ears and brain, throbbing, throbbing.

“Which way, friend?” demanded a patrol, carelessly throwing his horse across Berkley’s path.

“Orderly to Colonel Arran, 8th New York Lancers, wounded.  Is that the hospital, yonder?”

“Them school buildin’s,” nodded the patrol.  “Say, is your colonel very bad?  I’m 20th New York, doin’ provost.  We seen you fellers at White Oak.  Jesus! what a wallop they did give us——­”

He broke off grimly, turned his horse, and rode out into a soggy field where some men were dodging behind a row of shaggy hedge bushes.  And far behind Berkley heard his loud, bullying voice: 

“Git! you duck-legged, egg-suckin’, skunk-backed loafers!  Go on, there!  Aw, don’t yer talk back to me ‘r I’ll let m’ horse bite yer pants off!  Back yer go!  Forrard!  Hump!  Hump!  Scoot!”

Through the heavily falling rain he saw the lighted school buildings looming among the trees; turned into the drive, accounted for himself, gave his horse to a negro with orders to care for it, and followed a ward-master into an open-faced shed where a kettle was boiling over a sheet-iron stove.