In the morning, they sent me in an ambulance or "avalanche," as they call it, to head-quarters. Thought at first I was going before Felix or Stonewall himself; turned out to be General Hill. He came and looked into the ambulance. "What regiment?" "Second Massachusetts." "Let's see, Gordon's old regiment?" "Yes." "Best regiment in Banks' army; cut all to pieces, though: I've been over the ground," and exit. He ordered me sent to Orange Court House; countermanded, and they dumped me out by a blacksmith's shop. A surgeon came along and ordered me sent to Rapidan Station, on the box seat of an "avalanche"; and an awful "avalanche" it was,--four men with legs and arms off inside. It was eight miles over rocks and through rivers, and generally such a drive of damnation as never entered into the heart of man to conceive. Luckily, I kept my strength; but why the inside passengers didn't die before we got half way is the marvel. "The lamentable chorus, the cry of agony, the endless groan," as we bounced and jolted over corduroy road and river bed, was an ill thing to hear. We arrived at the railroad about dusk, just as I was calculating about how much longer I could stand it without fainting, and they put us out on the grass among those already arrived. The train came along after dark, and, finding that I must shift for myself or be left in the field, I made my painful way on hands and knees, among horses' feet and under the awful "avalanche," to the platform, where, after a while, they picked me up and put me aboard; turned seat back, put my foot up, and slept. An interval of broken oblivion in the dark car, with occasional wakings to a semi-consciousness of rumbling wheels, brakes, and once familiar railroad sounds, mingled strangely with groans, cries, stench, squalor, and misery. But, as the night was only a succession of frightful dreams, I didn't undertake to decide which was reality, but took the benefit of the doubt, which was a species of relief. But with the gray dawn illusions vanished, and the miserable reality stood out, bald and unmistakable. Where we were going, I didn't know; but after a while the impression seemed to prevail that it wasn't Richmond, but Staunton; and at about twelve we arrived here. The train at once became a menagerie, wherein the Yankee wild beasts were stirred up and stared at by the town. One citizen, I remember, was turned out of the car by a rebel sergeant for insulting the prisoners. They took us out at last, one or two rebs who had died in the night being first served. Finally, about evening, they took the two Yankee captains, in almost an upside-down position, with heads in straw and feet in air, through the town to the hospital, women coming to the windows with various expressions of countenance, pity being the scarcest. I've often seen them look out to see soldiers pass, but never expected to figure in this sort of a pageant for their edification.