The pedagogue shook his head in condemnation of the ignorance of his companions, but allowed the G. A. R. Man to proceed. “Durin’ the first day’s engagement our retchment, with a couple of others, an’ the trains, was ’bout three mile ahint Cemetary Hill, but on the next mornin’ we was ordered back twenty mile. It was hard to hev to drive off inter the country ’hen the boys was hevin’ it hot bangin’ away at the enemy, but them was orders, an’ a soldier allus obeys orders. “The fightin’ begin airly that day. We got the wagons a-goin’ afore sun-up, but it wasn’t long tell we could hear the roar o’ the guns, an’ see the smoke risin’ in clouds an’ then settlin’ down over the country. We felt pretty blue, too, ez we went trampin’ along, fer the wounded an’ stragglers was faster ’an we. They’d come hobblin’ up with bad news, sayin’ how the boys was bein’ cut up along the Emmettsburg road, an’ how we’d better move faster, ez the army was losin’ an’ the rebels ’ud soon be een on us. Then they’d hobble away agin. Them wasn’t our only troubles, either. The mules was behavin’ mean an’ cuttin’ up capers, an’ the wagons was breakin’ down. Then we hed to be continual watchin’ fer them Confederate cavalry we was expectin’ was a-goin’ to pounce down on us. “Evenin’ come, an’ we lay to fer the night. The fires was started, an’ the coffee set a-boilin’, an’ we had a chancet to rest a while. The wounded an’ the stragglers that jest filled the country kep’ comin’ in all the time, sometim’s alone, sometim’s in twos an’ threes, some with their arms tied up in all sorts o’ queer ways, or hobblin’ on sticks, or with their heads bandaged; about the miserablest lot o’ men I ever see. The noise of the fight stopped, an’ everything was quiet an’ peaceful like nawthin’ hed ben happenin’. The quiet an’ the dark an’ the fear we was goin’ to meet the enemy at any minute made it mighty onpleasant, an’ what with the stories them wounded fellys give us, we didn’t rest wery easy. “I went out on the picket line at ten o’clock. Seemed I hedn’t ben there an hour tell I made out the dark figure of a man comin’ th’oo the fiel’s wery slow like. Me an’ the fellys with me watched sharp. Sudden the man stopped, hesitated like an’ sank down in a heap. Then he picked himself up an’ come staggerin’ on. He couldn’t ’a’ ben more’n fifty yards away ’hen he th’owed up his hands an’ pitched for’a’d on his face. Me an’ me buddy run out an’ carried him inter the fire. But it wasn’t no uset. He was dead. “They was a bullet wound in his shoulder, an’ his clothes was soaked with blood that hed ben drippin’, drippin’ tell he fell the last time. I opened his coat, an’ in his pocket foun’ a letter, stamped, an’ directed apparent to his wife--that was all to tell who he was. So I went back to me post thinkin’ no more of it an’ never noticin’ that that man’s coat ’ud ’a’ fit two of him.