“What's this?” cried a surgeon, leaning forward, and placing his hand on the sick man's pulse. “Ah! take him back again; it 's all over there!” “Oh, no!” cried I, in agony, “it can scarcely be; they lifted him alive from the wagon.” “He's not dead, sir,” replied the surgeon, in a whisper, “but he will soon be; there's internal bleeding going on from that wound, and a few hours, or less perhaps must close the scene.” “Can nothing be done? nothing?” “I fear not.” He opened the jacket of the wounded man as he spoke, and slitting the inner clothes asunder with a quick stroke of his scissors, disclosed a tremendous sabre-wound in the side. “That is not the worst,” said he. “Look here,” pointing to a small bluish mark of a bullet hole above it; “here lies the mischief.” An hospital aid whispered something at the instant in the surgeon's ear, to which he quickly replied, “When?” “This instant, sir; the ligature slipped, and--” “Remove him,” was the reply. “Now, sir, I have a bed for your poor fellow here; but I have little hope to give you. His pulse is stronger, otherwise the endeavor would be lost time.” While they carried the litter forward, I perceived that another party were lifting from a bed near a figure, over whose face the sheet was carelessly thrown. I guessed from the gestures that the form they lifted was lifeless; the heavy sumph of the body upon the ground showed it beyond a doubt. The bearers replaced the dead man by the dying body of poor Pioche; and from a vague feeling of curiosity, I stooped down and drew back the sheet from the face of the corpse. As I did so, my limbs trembled, and I leaned back almost fainting against the wall. Pale with the pallor of death, but scarcely altered from life, I beheld the dead features of Amédée Pichot, the captain whose insolence had left an unsettled quarrel between us. The man for whose coming I waited to expiate an open insult, now lay cold and lifeless at my feet. What a rush of sensations passed through my mind as I gazed on that motionless mass! and oh, what gratitude my heart gushed to think that he did not fall by _my_ hand! “A brave soldier, but a quarrelsome friend,” said the surgeon, stooping down to examine the wound, with all the indifference of a man who regarded life as a mere problem. “It was a cannon-shot carried it off.” As he said this, he disclosed the mangled remains of a limb, torn from the trunk too high to permit of amputation. “Poor Amédée! it was the death he always wished for. It was a strange horror he had of falling by the hand of an adversary, rather than being carried off thus. And now for the cuirassier.” So saying, he turned towards the bed on which Pioche lav, still as death itself. A few minutes' careful investigation of the case enabled him to pronounce that although the chances were many against recovery, yet it was not altogether hopeless.