Then from the rear a roar of voices, and in the gathering gloom a host of men swept over me, disorderly, but charging hard—–­ the last charge of Gaines’s Mill.

“What troops are you?” I had strength to ask, and two replied:—­

“Hood’s brigade.”

“The Hampton Legion.”

* * * * *

Night had come.  The great battle was won.  Lights flashed and moved and disappeared over the hills and hollows of the field,—­men with torches and lanterns; and names of regiments were shouted into the darkness by the searchers for wounded friends who replied, and for others who could not.  At last I heard:  “First South Carolina!  First South Carolina!” and I gathered up my strength and cried, “Here!” Louis Bellot and two others came to me.  They carried me tenderly away, but not far; still in the field of blood they laid me down on the hillside—­and a night of horror passed slowly away.

* * * * *

The next morning, June 28th, they bore me on a stretcher back to the field hospital near Dr. Gaines’s, just in rear of the battlefield.  Our way was through scattered corpses.  We passed by many Zouaves, lying stiff and stark; one I shall always call to mind:  he was lying flat on his back, the soles of his feet firm on the ground, his knees drawn up to right angles above, and with his elbows planted on the grass, his fingers clinched the air.  His open mouth grinned ghastly on us as we went by.

At the field hospital the dangerously wounded were so numerous that I was barely noticed; a brief examination; “flesh wound”—­that was all.  I had already found out that the bullet had passed entirely through the fleshy part of my thigh, and I had no fears; but the limb now gave me great pain, and I should have been glad to have it dressed.  I was laid upon the ground under a tree and remained there until night, when I was put with others into an ambulance and taken to some station on some railroad—­I have never known what station or what road.  The journey was painful.  I was in the upper story of the ambulance.  We jolted over rough roads, halting frequently because the long train filled the road ahead.  The men in the lower story were badly wounded, groaning, and begging for this or that.  I did not know their voices; they were not of our company.  But some time in the night I learned somehow—­I suppose by his companion calling his name—­that one of the men below me was named Virgil Harley.  Harley?  I thought—­Virgil Harley?  Why, I knew that name once!  Surely I knew that name in South Carolina!  And I would have spoken, but was made aware that Virgil Harley was wounded unto death.  When we reached the railroad, I was taken out and lifted into a car, I asked about Virgil Harley.  “He is dead,” was the answer.

Then I felt more than ever alone because of this slightest opportunity, now lost forever.  Virgil Harley might have been able to tell me of myself.  He was dead.  I had not even seen him.  I had but heard his voice in groans that ended in the death-rattle.