How long after it was that consciousness returned, I cannot tell; if indeed that bewildered dizzy realization of things present that gradually forced itself upon me, can be called consciousness. I was lying on the ground, and looked, upon opening my eyes, up at the clear evening sky. It could not have been long after sunset, and all the scene around me, when at last I tried to comprehend it, was distinct enough. Some distance from where I lay, there was a bridge and an embankment, perhaps thirty feet high. Between that and me, a horrid mass loomed up against the sky, black and shapeless, one car piled above another in an awful wreck. Dark figures lay around me on the ground, some writhing in agony, others motionless and rigid; groans and cries the most appalling smote my ear. But my ear and all my senses were so stunned and bewildered, that to see and hear was not to feel alarm or awe or pity, only dull stupor and discomfort. I did not feel the least desire to move or speak, the least solicitude about my fate. Half unconsciously I lay watching the fading light in the sky, and the dark figures that soon were swarming around, bending over and raising up the wounded, and thrusting lanterns into the faces of such as lay stiff and still and did not heed their ejaculations. At last two men came up to where I lay, and one, from the exclamation of recognition he made as they bent over me, I knew to be Mr. Rutledge. The effect of the lantern glaring so suddenly in my face, was to make me start up, with some broken exclamation; but the words had hardly left my lips, when an acute pain and then a giddy blindness rushed over me, and I sunk back, and with a horrible sensation of falling down, down, to unfathomable darkness, I was again insensible. I suppose I must have remained in that state all night, for it was daylight when I was again sufficiently conscious to know what was going on around me. Mr. Rutledge was sitting by me and was saying to the physician, whose entrance had, I think, first aroused me, that he considered me doing very well, the fever was evidently abating, and that he thought the doctor would agree with him that I might soon be moved to more comfortable quarters. "If any such can be found," the doctor answered; "but every house in the town, as well as both the hotels, are crowded with the sufferers, and I think your chance of comfort is as good here as it will be anywhere else; for, sir, it is a wretched little town at the best. I wish we could boast better accommodations for strangers."