_something_ on the tempestuous air, and yet a stranger to it. There came a lull in the storm at last, and then, O God! O God! through the sullen gloom, his voice was calling to me. Now faint and low, as if his life was ebbing; then raised in agony, wild with supplication and sharp with pain. I saw him covered with gaping wounds, on a hideous field, piled with slain and soaked with blood. I went mad, I think: I have a vague remembrance of rushing out into that fearful storm, undressed as I was, with wild resolve to follow the sound of the voice, to reach him somehow, or die in the mad attempt; of being brought back, shut up in my room, and a sort of guard placed over me; of making wild attempts to rush out again, and struggling ineffectually with those that held me back--of raving wildly; then of long and dreamless slumbers, when I had become exhausted, and the sharp agony was past; of rousing myself to go about in a listless, apathetic way, waiting with dulled sense for lists of killed and wounded; of the doctor bringing the paper to me and saying, with his face all light: 'He is not dead; you will find his name among the wounded;' of finding where he was, eluding their vigilance, and travelling night and day until I reached the place. All this seems vague and unreal, as a half-forgotten dream--too dim and lifeless for memory. Entire change of scene, new sights and faces, and, more than all, the conviction that the time had come for action _now_, and that _he_ would need me, roused me from this misty state a little. When I landed at the place, I think I recovered the clear consciousness of my surroundings, while standing in the provost-marshal's office (the city was under military rule) waiting my turn to speak.