the British soldiers, to Newburyport, and heard the people saying that “the redcoats were coming, killing and murdering everybody as they went along.”  Frederick looked cheerful for a place that had so recently been in an enemy’s hands.  Here and there a house or shop was shut up, but the national colors were waving in all directions, and the general aspect was peaceful and contented.  I saw no bullet-marks or other sign of the fighting which had gone on in the streets.  The Colonel’s lady was taken in charge by a daughter of that hospitable family to which we had been commended by its head, and I proceeded to inquire for wounded officers at the various temporary hospitals.

At the United States Hotel, where many were lying, I heard mention of an officer in an upper chamber, and, going there, found Lieutenant Abbott, of the Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteers, lying ill with what looked like typhoid fever.  While there, who should come in but the almost ubiquitous Lieutenant Wilkins, of the same Twentieth, whom I had met repeatedly before on errands of kindness or duty, and who was just from the battle-ground.  He was going to Boston in charge of the body of the lamented Dr. Revere, the Assistant Surgeon of the regiment, killed on the field.  From his lips I learned something of the mishaps of the regiment.  My Captain’s wound he spoke of as less grave than at first thought; but he mentioned incidentally having heard a story recently that he was killed,—­a fiction, doubtless,—­a mistake,—­a palpable absurdity,—­not to be remembered or made any account of.  Oh no! but what dull ache is this in that obscurely sensitive region, somewhere below the heart, where the nervous centre called the semilunar ganglion lies unconscious of itself until a great grief or a mastering anxiety reaches it through all the non-conductors which isolate it from ordinary impressions?  I talked awhile with Lieutenant Abbott, who lay prostrate, feeble, but soldier-like and uncomplaining, carefully waited upon by a most excellent lady, a captain’s wife, New England born, loyal as the Liberty on a golden ten-dollar piece, and of lofty bearing enough to have sat for that goddess’s portrait.  She had stayed in Frederick through the Rebel inroad, and kept the star-spangled banner where it would be safe, to unroll it as the last Rebel hoofs clattered off from the pavement of the town.

Near by Lieutenant Abbott was an unhappy gentleman, occupying a small chamber, and filling it with his troubles.  When he gets well and plump, I know he will forgive me if I confess that I could not help smiling in the midst of my sympathy for him.  He had been a well-favored man, he said, sweeping his hand in a semicircle, which implied that his acute-angled countenance had once filled the goodly curve he described.  He was now a perfect Don Quixote to look upon.  Weakness had made him querulous, as it does all of us, and he piped his grievances to me in a thin voice,