One day, in winter quarters, a gunner was trying to open a shell which had failed to explode when fired from the enemy’s battery into the Confederate lines. The missile burst while the gunner was handling it, and tore off the poor fellow’s hand. The surgeon had ridden away somewhither—nobody knew whither—and it was at least a mile’s distance to the nearest camp where a surgeon might be found. Meanwhile, the man seemed doomed to bleed to death. The captain was hurriedly wondering what to do, when Kilgariff came quietly but quickly, pushed his way through the group of excited men, knotted a handkerchief, and deftly bound it around the wounded man’s arm. “Hold that firmly,” he said to a corporal standing by. “Watch the stump, and if the blood begins to flow again, twist the loop a trifle tighter, but not too tight, only enough to prevent a free hemorrhage—bleeding, I mean.” Then, touching his cap brim, he asked the captain:— “May I go to the surgeon’s tent and bring some necessary appliances? I think I may save this poor fellow’s life, and there is no time to be lost.” The captain gave permission, of course, and a few minutes later Kilgariff returned with a score of things needed. Kneeling, he arranged them on the ground. Then he examined the wounded man’s pulse, and with a look of satisfaction saturated a handkerchief with chloroform from a bottle he had brought. He then turned again to Captain Pollard, saying:— “Will you kindly hold that over the man’s nose and mouth? And will you put your finger on his uninjured wrist, observing the pulse-beats carefully? Tell me, please, if any marked change occurs.” “Why, what are you going to do?” asked the captain. “With your permission, I am going to amputate this badly shattered wrist. There is no time to be lost.” With that, he set to work, pausing only to direct one of the corporals to keep the men back and prevent too close a crowding around the patient. With what seemed to Captain Pollard incredible quickness, Kilgariff amputated the arm above the wrist, took up the arteries, and neatly bandaged the wound. Then he bade some of the men bear the patient on a litter to his hut, and place him in his bunk. He remained by the poor fellow’s side until the effects of shock and chloroform had subsided. Then he returned to his quarters quite as if nothing out of the ordinary routine had happened. Captain Pollard had seen enough of field surgery during his three years of active military service to know that Kilgariff’s work in this case had been done with the skill of an expert, and his astonishment over this revelation of his sergeant-major’s accomplishment was great. Nevertheless, he shrank from questioning the man about the matter, or saying anything to him which might be construed as an implied question. All that he said was:— “I thank you, Kilgariff, and congratulate you! You have saved a good man’s life this day, and God does not give it to many men to do that.”