But they lifted him up again, and the litter bearers carried him on, the young officers crowded close around him. Although it was far on toward midnight, the roar of the battle swelled afresh through the Wilderness. They came presently to an ambulance, by the side of which Jackson's physician, Dr. McGuire, stood. The surgeon, tears in his eyes, bent over the general and asked him if he were badly hurt. Jackson replied that he thought he was dying. An officer of high rank, Colonel Crutchfield, whom Jackson esteemed highly, was already lying in the ambulance, wounded severely. They put Jackson beside him and drove slowly toward the rear. Once, when Crutchfield groaned under the jolting of the ambulance, Jackson made them stop until his comrade was easier. Then the mournful procession moved on, while the battle roared and crashed about the lone ambulance that bore the stricken idol of the Confederacy, Lee's right arm, the man without whom the South could not win. Harry heard long afterward that a minister in New Orleans used in his prayer some such words as these, "Oh, Lord, when Thou in Thy infinite wisdom didst decree that the Southern Confederacy should fail, Thou hadst first to take away Thy servant, Stonewall Jackson." Harry and Dalton might have followed the ambulance that carried Jackson away, as they were members of his staff, but they felt that their place was on this dusky battlefield. While they paused, not knowing what to do, a body of men came through the brushwood and they recognized the upright and martial figures of Colonel Leonidas Talbot and Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St. Hilaire. Just behind them were St. Clair, Langdon and the rest of the Invincibles. The two colonels turned and gazed at the retreating ambulance, a shadow for a moment in the dusk, and then a shadow gone. "I saw them putting an officer in that ambulance, Harry," said Colonel Talbot. "Who was it?" Harry choked and made no answer. Colonel Talbot, surprised, turned to Dalton. "Who was it?" he repeated. Dalton turned his face away, and was silent. At sight of this emotion, a sudden, terrible suspicion was born in the mind of Colonel Leonidas Talbot. It was like a dagger thrust. "You don't mean--it can't be--" he exclaimed, in broken words. Harry could control his feelings no longer. "Yes, Colonel," he burst forth. "It was he, Stonewall Jackson, shot down in the darkness and by mistake by our own men!" "Was he hurt badly?" "One arm was shattered completely, and he was shot through the hand of the other." The moonlight shone on Harry's face just then, and the colonel, as he looked at him, drew in his breath with a deep gasp. "So bad as that!" he muttered. "I did not think our champion could fall." Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St. Hilaire, Langdon and St. Clair, who had heard him, also turned pale, but were silent.