MY HUNT AFTER “THE CAPTAIN.”

In the dead of the night which closed upon the bloody field of Antietam, my household was startled from its slumbers by the loud summons of a telegraphic messenger.  The air had been heavy all day with rumors of battle, and thousands and tens of thousands had walked the streets with throbbing hearts, in dread anticipation of the tidings any hour might bring.

We rose hastily, and presently the messenger was admitted.  I took the envelope from his hand, opened it, and read:—­

Hagerstown 17th

To——­ H——­

Capt.  H——­ wounded shot through the neck thought not mortal at
Keedysville

WILLIAM G LEDUC

Through the neck,—­no bullet left in wound.  Windpipe, food-pipe, carotid, jugular, half a dozen smaller, but still formidable, vessels, a great braid of nerves, each as big as a lamp-wick, spinal cord,—­ought to kill at once, if at all. Thought not mortal, or not thought mortal,—­which was it?  The first; that is better than the second would be.—­“Keedysville, a post-office, Washington Co., Maryland.”  Leduc?  Leduc?  Don’t remember that name.—­The boy is waiting for his money.  A dollar and thirteen cents.  Has nobody got thirteen cents?  Don’t keep that boy waiting,—­how do we know what messages he has got to carry?

The boy had another message to carry.  It was to the father of Lieutenant-Colonel Wilder Dwight, informing him that his son was grievously wounded in the same battle, and was lying at Boonsborough, a town a few miles this side of Keedysville.  This I learned the next morning from the civil and attentive officials at the Central Telegraph-Office.

Calling upon this gentleman, I found that he meant to leave in the quarter past two o’clock train, taking with him Dr. George H. Gay, an accomplished and energetic surgeon, equal to any difficult question or pressing emergency.  I agreed to accompany them, and we met in the cars.  I felt myself peculiarly fortunate in having companions whose society would be a pleasure, whose feelings would harmonize with my own, and whose assistance I might, in case of need, be glad to claim.

It is of the journey which we began together, and which I finished apart, that I mean to give my “Atlantic” readers an account.  They must let me tell my story in my own way, speaking of many little matters that interested or amused me, and which a certain leisurely class of elderly persons, who sit at their firesides and never travel, will, I hope, follow with a kind of interest.  For, besides the main object of my excursion, I could not help being excited by the incidental sights and occurrences of a trip which to a commercial traveller or a newspaper-reporter would seem quite commonplace and undeserving of record.  There are periods in which all places and people seem