“Oh, dear, no.  Old Johnston had finished the job before the President (Olympia noticed that all Southerners dwelt upon this title with complacent insistence) could reach the field.  He was barely in time to see the cavalry of ‘Jeb’ Stuart charge the regulars on the Warrenton road.”

The train came to a halt, and the young man said, cheerfully: 

“Here we are.  The hospital’s still right smart over yonder in the trees.”

“But you will go with us, will you not?” Olympia asked in alarm, for it was wearing toward night.

“Oh, yes; I’m detailed to remain with you until you have found out about your kinsfolk.”

In the mellow sunset the three women followed the orderly across the fields strewed with armaments, supplies, and the rough depot paraphernalia of an army at rest.  The hospital consisted of a large tent for the slightly hurt, and a few old buildings and a barn for the more serious cases.  The search was futile.  There were two or three of the Caribees in the place, but they knew nothing of their missing comrades.  Indeed, Jack’s detail by Colonel Sherman had effectually cut off all trace of his movements after the battle began.

Mrs. Sprague’s tears were falling softly as the orderly led them to the surgeon’s office.  They were there shown the records of all who had been buried on the field.  Many, he informed them, sympathetically, had been buried where they fell, in great ditches dug by the sappers.  In every case the garments had been stripped from the bodies before burial, so that there was absolutely no means of identification.  Most of the wounded had, however, been sent to Richmond with the prisoners.  “It would not do,” he added, kindly, “to give up all hope of the lost ones, until they had seen the roster of the prisoners and the wounded in the Richmond prisons and hospitals.”

Quarters were given to them in a tent put at their disposal by the surgeons, and in the long, wakeful hours of the night Olympia heard the guard pacing monotonously before the door.  The music of the bugles aroused them at sunrise—­a wan, haggard group, sad-eyed and silent.  The girl made desperate efforts to cheer the wretched mother, and even privily took Merry to task for giving way before what was as yet but a shadow.  ’Twould be time enough for tears when they found evidence that the stout, vigorous boys had been killed.  As they finished the very plain breakfast of half-baked bread, pea-coffee, and eggs, bought by the orderly at an exorbitant rate, he said, good-naturedly: 

“The train don’t come till about ten o’clock.  If you’d like to see the battle-field, I can get the ambulance and take you over.”