THREE:"What'n the world are they stoppin' here for?" groaned Si. "Some woman's got a dozen aigs or a pound o' butter that she wants to send to town. I s'pose we'll stop here until she finishes churnin', or gits another aig to make up a dozen. I never did see sich putterin' along."
THREE:So it was with every one. The moment the excitement of the impending fight passed away, every one was sinking with fatigue, and all his other troubles came back. Monty Scruggs suddenly remembered how badly he had been hurt, and started to drag himself off in search of the Surgeon, while Harry Joslyn and Sandy Baker, chumming together for the first time, snuggled together in their blankets, and sought that relief from the excitement and fatigues of the day which kindly Nature never refuses to healthy young bodies."Certainly; I didn't think o' that before," echoed the father.
THREE:There was silence.
THREE:Gornom explained. When he had finished, a silence thick as velvet descended upon the room. Then, very suddenly, all the elders spoke at once.Again the grewsome gong sounded, the red fire glared forth and the hollow voice announced that it was so recorded.
THREE:"Reglar clay-knob whiteoak," whispered Shorty; "couldn't split it with a maul and wedge. Don't mind that a mite, since we got that flag. But how's my pardner over there?"
THREE:
THREE:"Certainly, madam," tenderly to a poor woman who had come to see if she could learn something of her son, last heard from as sick in hospital at Chattanooga. "Sit down. Take that chairno, that one; it's more comfortable. Give me your son's name and regiment. I'll see if we kin find out anything about him. No use seein' the General. I'll do jest as well, and 'll tend to it quicker."He had anxiously sought the entire length of the camp for something of that kind. He had visited all the sutlers, and canvassed the scanty stocks in the few stores in Chattanooga. He had bought the sole remaining can of tomatoes at a price which would have almost bought the field in which the tomatoes were raised, and he had turned over the remnant lots of herring, cheese, etc., he found at the sutler's, with despair at imagining any sort of way in which they could be worked up to become appetizing and assimilative to Si's stomach.
THREE:He went to Si and examined him. Shorty turned on his side and watched him with eager eyes. His heart sickened as he saw the Surgeon's face grow graver as he proceeded. The Surgeon probed the bullet's track with his fingers, and drew out a piece of folded letter paper stained with blood. Instinctively he unfolded it, and read through the ensanguined smears, written in a cramped school-girl hand: