Meantime those in the wood, moving as rapidly as possible under the circumstances, were plunging deeper and deeper into its recesses.

There was an occasional groan or half suppressed shriek from others of the wounded, but Boyd’s cries were incessant and heart-rending, till a handkerchief was suddenly thrust into his mouth with a muttered exclamation, “Necessity knows no law! it’s to save your own life and liberty as well as ours.”

At length, well nigh spent with their exertions, the bearers paused, resting their burdens for a moment upon the ground, while they listened intently for the sounds of pursuit.

“We’ve baffled ’em, I think,” panted Bill, “I don’t hear no more of that—­tramp, tramp, and the bugle’s stopped too.”

“That’s so and I reckon we’re pretty safe now,” returned another voice.  “But what’s to be done with these fellows? where’ll we take ’em?”

“To Rood’s still-house,” was the answer.  “It’s about half a mile further on, and deep in the woods.  And I say you, Tom Arnold, pull off your disguise and go after Dr. Savage as fast as you can.  Tell him to come to the still-house on the fleetest horse he can get hold of; and bring along everything necessary to dress scalds and pistol-shot wounds.  Say there’s no time to lose or Boyd’ll die on our hands.  Now up with your load, boys, and on again.”

The voice had a tone of command and the orders were instantly obeyed.

The still-house was an old, dilapidated frame building, whose rude accommodations differed widely from those to which, save during his army life, Boyd had been accustomed from infancy.

They carried him in and laid him down upon a rough pallet of straw furnished with coarse cotton sheets and an army blanket or two, not over clean.

But in his dire extremity of pain he heeded naught of this, and his blinded eyes could not see the bare rafters overhead, the filthy uncarpeted floor, the few broken chairs and rude board seats, or the little unpainted pine table with its bit of flickering, flaming tallow candle, stuck in an old bottle.

His comrades did what they could for his relief; but it was not much, and their clumsy handling was exquisite torture to the raw, quivering flesh, and his entreaties that they would put him out of his misery at once, by sending a bullet through his brain, were piteous to hear.  They had taken his arms from him, or he would have destroyed himself.

The room was filled with doleful sounds,—­the groans and sighs of men in sore pain, but his rose above all others.

Dr. Savage arrived at length, but half drunk, and, an unskillful surgeon at his best, made but clumsy work with his patients on this occasion.

Yet the applications brought, in time, some slight alleviation of even Boyd’s unendurable agony; his cries grew fainter and less frequent, till they ceased altogether, and like the other wounded he relieved himself only with an occasional moan or groan.