The wounded man nearest to me had received a musket ball in his stomach.  He it was who was gurgling.  The old woman came towards the mattress with a candle, and whispered to us, showing us her fist, “If you could only see the hole that that has made!  We have stuffed lint as large as this into his stomach.”

She resumed, “He is not above twenty-five years old.  He will be dead to-morrow morning.”

The other was still younger.  He was hardly eighteen.  “He has a handsome black overcoat,” said the woman.  “He is most likely a student.”  The young man had the whole of the lower part of his face swathed in blood-stained linen.  She explained to us that he had received a ball in the mouth, which had broken his jaw.  He was in a high fever, and gazed at us with lustrous eyes.  From time to time he stretched his right arm towards a basin full of water in which a sponge was soaking; he took the sponge, carried it to his face, and himself moistened his bandages.

It seemed to me that his gaze fastened upon me in a singular manner.  I went up to him, I stooped down, and I gave him my hand, which he took in his own.  “Do you know me?” I asked him.  He answered “Yes,” by a pressure of the hand which went to my heart.

The last-maker said to me, “Wait a minute for me here, I shall be back directly; I want to see in this neighborhood, if there is any means of getting a gun.”

He added,—­

“Would you like one for yourself?”

“No,” answered I.  “I shall remain here without a gun.  I only take a half share in the civil war; I am willing to die, I am not willing to kill.”

I asked him if he thought his friends were going to come.  He declared that he could not understand it, that the men from the societies ought to have arrived already, that instead of two men in the barricade there should be twenty, that instead of two barricades in the street there should have been ten, and that something must have happened; he added,—­

“However, I will go and see; promise to wait for me here.”

“I promise you,” I answered, “I will wait all night if necessary.”

He left me.

The old woman had reseated herself near the little girl, who did not seem to understand much of what was passing round her, and who from time to time raised great calm eyes towards me.  Both were poorly clad, and it seemed to me that the child had stockingless feet.  “My man has not yet come back,” said the old woman, “my poor man has not yet come back.  I hope nothing has happened to him!” With many heart-rending “My God’s,” and all the while quickly picking her lint, she wept.  I could not help thinking with anguish of the old man we had seen stretched on the pavement at a few paces distant.

A newspaper was lying on the table.  I took it up, and I unfolded it.  It was the P——­, the rest of the title had been torn off.  A blood-stained hand was plainly imprinted on it.  A wounded man on entering had probably placed his hand on the table on the spot where the newspaper lay.  My eyes fell upon these lines:—­