_Annie_:--_Dearest Friend_:--I am not long for this world, and I wish to thank you for your kindness ere I go. You were the only one who was ever kind to me since I entered the Army. At Chancellorsville, I was shot through the body, the ball entering my side and coming out through the shoulder. I was also hit in the arm, and was carried to the hospital in the woods where I lay for hours and not a surgeon would touch me when you came along and gave me water and bound up my wounds. Please accept my heartfelt gratitude; and may God bless you and protect you from all dangers; may you be eminently successful in your present pursuit. I enclose a flower, a present from a sainted mother; it is the only gift I have to send you. Had I a picture, I would send you one. I know nothing of your history, but I hope you always have and always may be happy, and since I will be unable to see you in this world, I hope I may meet you in the better world where there is no war. May God bless you, both now and forever, is the wish of your grateful friend. Such rewards for loving service must have been very grateful to one of Annie's sensitive nature, and she continued to toil on in the spirit of love and heroism through the battle of Gettysburg, and the engagements of Grant's closing campaign, where her gentleness and courage were favourite themes of the soldiers, who could scarcely bear to have her out of their sight when they were sick or wounded. At the battle of the Wilderness, when the fighting was fiercest and the balls were raining like hailstones, the Fifth Michigan, to which Annie was now attached, together with other troops, were surrounded and nearly cut off by the rebels and as the line of battle swung round, the rebels at once took the places vacated by the Union men. Annie was at that moment speaking to a little drummer boy when a bullet pierced his heart, and he fell against Annie, dead. For the first and only time during the war she was overcome by a panic of terror and laying the dead boy on the ground, she ran like a hunted deer towards what she took to be the Union troops, to find to her horror she was mistaken. It was the rebel forces, but, too late to retrace her steps she dashed ahead, cutting her swift way through the enemy's line, and though shots whistled after her, she escaped in safety.