It was dusk enough in the wood which they finally reached. The bayou went through it crookedly, and from the other side of the water came the hum of Sherman’s troubled, recriminatory thousands. They were so close that orders might be heard and the tread of the sentries. The men in grey broke rank, moved, two and two, cautiously through the cane looking for the wounded. The cane grew thick, and for all it was so sodden wet might be trusted here or there for a crackling sound. The trees grew up straight from black mud. They were immensely tall and from their branches hung yards and yards of moss, like tatters of old sails or like shrivelled banners in a cathedral roof. Large birds sat, too, upon the higher limbs, watching. Beneath lay killed and wounded, a score or so of forms half sunk in the universal swamp. The searchers left the dead, but where there was life in a figure they laid hold of it, head and feet, and bore it, swiftly and silently as might be, out of the wood, back to the rising, protected ground. Edward and the man with him found an officer lying between huge knees of cypress. The cane walled him in, a hand and arm hung languid in the dark water. Kneeling, Edward felt the heart. “He’s far and far away, but there’s a chance, perhaps. Take the feet.” Half an hour later, by a great camp-fire behind a battery, surgeons and helpers took these wounded from the hands of the men who had gone after them. Stephen D. Lee and General Seth Barton were standing by. “Thank God,” said the former, “for a small field hospital! After Sharpsburg—ugh!” A major of Wither’s brigade walked slowly between the rows. “It was the ——th Louisiana cut off in the wood. There’s an officer or two missing—” “This is an officer, sir,” said Edward. “He was living when we lifted him—” General Barton came across. “He is not living now. A handsome man!... He lies there so stately.... A captain.” Edward held out his hand—in it an envelope. “This fell from his coat, sir. The bullet went through it—” The movement brought hand and letter into the ruddy light. Involuntarily he uttered an exclamation. “It is addressed to me!” The major rose from his knees. “Quite dead.... And you would have called him Fortune’s favorite. It is Louis Gaillard from down the river—Cape Jessamine.” CHAPTER V FORT PEMBERTON