Placing his canteen at the lips of the poor wretch, he bade him drink.  His frame quivered as he clutched the canteen with his remaining hand.  The death damp was on his forehead; but his eye lighted up with new lustre as he drank the grateful beverage.

“God bless you!  God bless you!” exclaimed he as he removed the canteen from his lips.  “You are a Yankee,” he added, as he fixed his glazing eyes upon Tom’s uniform.  “Are you wounded?”

“No; I am worn out.  I have eaten nothing since daylight, and not much then.  I am used up.”

“Put your hand in my haversack.  There is something there,” gasped the dying man.

Tom bent over him to comply with the invitation; but, with a thrill of horror, he started back, as he listened to the death-rattle in the throat of the rebel, and saw his eyes fixed and lustreless in death.  It was an awful scene to the inexperienced youth.  Though he had seen hundreds fall in the battle of that day, death had not seemed so ghastly and horrible to him as now, when he stood face to face with the grim monster.  For a few moments he forgot his own toil-worn limbs, his craving hunger, and his aching head.

He gazed upon the silent form before him, which had ceased to suffer, and he felt thankful that he had been able to mitigate even a single pang of the dying rebel.  But not long could he gaze, awe-struck, at the ghastly spectacle before him, for he had a life to save.  The words of the sufferer—­his last words—­offering him the contents of his haversack recurred to him; but Tom’s sensibilities recoiled at the thought of eating bread taken from the body of a dead man, and he turned away.

“Why shouldn’t I take it?” said he to himself.  “It may save my life.  With rest and food, I may escape.  Pooh!  I’ll not be a fool!”

Bending over the dead man, he resolutely cut the haversack from his body, and then returned to the log whose friendly shelter had screened him from the eyes of the rebel horsemen.  Seating himself upon the ground, he commenced exploring the haversack.  It contained two “ash-cakes,” a slice of bacon, and a small bottle.  Tom’s eyes glowed with delight as he gazed upon this rich feast, and, without waiting to say grace or consider the circumstances under which he obtained the materials for his feast, he began to eat.  Ash-cake was a new institution to him.  It was an Indian cake baked in the ashes, probably at the camp-fires of the rebels at Manassas.  It tasted very much like his mother’s johnny-cake, only he missed the fresh butter with which he had been wont to cover the article at home.