And now we are aware of other figures wandering, ghost-like, over the field. Some on errands like our own, drawn by compelling appeals; some seeking a comrade with uncertain steps amid the unknown, and ever and anon bending down to scan the pale visage closer, or, it may be, by the light of a brief match, whose blue, flickering flame could scarcely give the features a more recognizable or human look; some man desperately wounded, yet seeking with faltering step, before his fast ebbing blood shall have left him too weak to move, some quiet or sheltered spot out of sound of the terrible appeals he could neither answer nor endure, or out of reach of the raging battle coming with the morning; one creeping, yet scarcely moving, from one lifeless form to another, if, perchance, he might find a swallow of water in the canteen which still swung from the dead soldier’s side; or another, as with just returning or last remaining consciousness, vainly striving to raise from a mangled heap, that he may not be buried with them while yet alive, or some man yet sound of body, but pacing feverishly his ground because in such a bivouac his spirit could not sleep. And so we picked our way back amid the stark, upturned faces of our little living line. Having held our places all the night, we had to keep to them all the more closely the next day; for it would be certain death to attempt to move away. As it was, it was only by making breastworks and barricades of the dead men that covered the field that we saved any alive. We did what we could to take a record of these men. A Testament that had fallen from the breast pocket of the soldier who had been my pillow I sent soon after to his home--he was not of my command--and it proved to be the only clew his parents ever had of his fate. The next midnight, after thirty-six hours of this harrowing work, we were bidden to withdraw into the town for refreshment and rest. But neither rest nor motion was to be thought of till we had paid fitting honor to our dead. We laid them on the spot where they had won, on the sheltered edge of the crest, and committed their noble forms to the earth, and their story to their country’s keeping. “We buried them darkly, at dead of night, The sod with our bayonets turning.”