"Water!--water--for God's sake give us water!" This came from a pile of wounded men just under the guns on the Columbia pike. It came from a sixteen year old boy in blue. Four dead comrades lay across him. "And this is the curse of it," said General Travis, as he rode among the men. But suddenly amid the smoke and confusion, the soldiers saw what many thought was an apparition--an old, old warrior, on a horse with black mane and tail and fiery eyes, but elsewhere covered with white sweat and pale as the horse of death. The rider's face too, was deadly white, but his keen eyes blazed with the fire of many generations of battle-loving ancestors. The soldiers flocked round him, half doubting, half believing. The terrible ordeal of that bloody night's work; the poignant grief from beholding the death and wounds of friends and brothers; the weird, uncanny groans of the dying upon the sulphurous-smelling night air; the doubt, uncertainty, and yet, through it all, the bitter realization that all was in vain, had shocked, benumbed, unsettled the nerves of the stoutest; and many of them scarcely knew whether they were really alive, confronting in the weird hours of the night ditches of blood and breastworks of death, or were really dead--dead from concussion, from shot or shell, and were now wandering on a spirit battle-field till some soul-leader should lead them away. And so, half dazed and half dreaming, and yet half alive to its realization, they flocked around the old warrior, and they would not have been at all surprised had he told them he came from another world. Some thought of Mars. Some thought of death and his white horse. Some felt of the animal's mane and touched his streaming flanks and cordy legs to see if it were really a horse and not an apparition, while "What is it?" and "Who is he?" was whispered down the lines. Then the old rider spoke for the first time, and said simply: "Men, I have come to lead you in." A mighty shout came up. "It's General Lee!--he has come to lead us in," they shouted. "No, no, men,"--said the old warrior quickly. "I am not General Lee. But I have led Southern troops before. I was at New Orleans. I was--" "It's Ole Hick'ry--by the eternal!--Ole Hick'ry--and he's come back to life to lead us!" shouted a big fellow as he threw his hat in the air. "Ole Hickory! Ole Hickory!" echoed and re-echoed down the lines, till it reached the ears of the dying soldiers in the ditch itself, and many a poor, brave fellow, as his heart strings snapped and the broken chord gurgled out into the dying moan, saw amid the blaze and light of the new life, the apparition turn into a reality and a smile of exquisite satisfaction was forever frozen on his face in the mould of death, as he whispered with his last breath: "It's Old Hickory--my General--I have fought a good fight--I come!"