Baillie was too weak, and still too muddled in his intelligence, to disabuse the mountaineer's mind of this misconception. It is only ordinary justice to say that his interpretation was utterly wrong. There was never a more heroic set of men than the surgeons who ministered on the battle-fields of the Civil War to the wounded on one side or on the other. At the beginning, their department was utterly unorganised, and scarcely at all equipped, either with material appliances or with capable human help in the way of nurses, litter-bearers, or ambulance-men. They did the best they could. When battle was on, they hung yellow flags from trees as near the firing-line as possible, and these flags were respected by both sides, so far as intentional firing upon them was concerned. But located as they were, just in the rear of the fighters, these field-hospitals were constantly under a heavy fire, aimed not at them, but at the fighting-line in front, and it was under such a fire that the young surgeons did their difficult and very delicate work. The tying of an artery was often interfered with by the bursting of a shell which half-buried both patient and surgeon in loose earth. It was the duty of these field-surgeons to do only so much as might be immediately necessary--to put their patients as quickly as possible into a condition in which it was reasonably safe to send them, in ambulances or upon litters, to some better-equipped hospital in the rear. Very naturally and very properly, the surgeons discriminated, in selecting wounded men to send to the hospitals, between those who were in condition to be removed, and those to whom removal would mean death, certainly or probably. The mountaineer, who had been detailed as a hospital attendant that day, did not understand, and so he misinterpreted. "Where is my hat?" Baillie Pegram asked, after a period of silence. "Is it the one with a red feather in it?" responded the attendant. "Yes." "Well, it's a good deal the wuss for wear," answered the man, producing the blood-soaked and soil-stained headgear. "I don't think you'll want to wear it again." But when the headpiece was brought, the young man, with feeble and uncertain fingers, detached the feather and thrust it inside his flannel shirt, leaving the lacerated hat where it had fallen upon the ground. "Am I badly wounded?" Pegram asked, after a little. "Well," answered the man, "you've got a good deal more'n I should like to be a-carryin' around with me. But I reckon you'll pull through, perticular ef you kin git to a hospital after a bit." Just then, as night was falling, a pitiless rain began, and all night long Baillie Pegram lay in a furrow of the field, soaked and suffering. But he removed the feather from its hiding-place, and held it upon his chest, in order that the rain might wash away the blood-stains with which it had been saturated.