But there was the great battle-field only about three miles from Keedysville, and it was impossible to go without seeing that.  James Grayden’s directions were peremptory, but it was a case for the higher law.  I must make a good offer for an extra couple of hours, such as would satisfy the owners of the wagon, and enforce it by a personal motive.  I did this handsomely, and succeeded without difficulty.  To add brilliancy to my enterprise, I invited the Chaplain and the Philanthropist to take a free passage with me.

We followed the road through the village for a space, then turned off to the right, and wandered somewhat vaguely, for want of precise directions, over the hills.  Inquiring as we went, we forded a wide creek in which soldiers were washing their clothes, the name of which we did not then know, but which must have been the Antietam.  At one point we met a party, women among them, bringing off various trophies they had picked up on the battlefield.  Still wandering along, we were at last pointed to a hill in the distance, a part of the summit of which was covered with Indian corn.  There, we were told, some of the fiercest fighting of the day had been done.  The fences were taken down so as to make a passage across the fields, and the tracks worn within the last few days looked like old roads.  We passed a fresh grave under a tree near the road.  A board was nailed to the tree, bearing the name, as well as I could make it out, of Gardiner, of a New Hampshire regiment.

On coming near the brow of the hill, we met a party carrying picks and spades.  “How many?” “Only one.”  The dead were nearly all buried, then, in this region of the field of strife.  We stopped the wagon, and, getting out, began to look around us.  Hard by was a large pile of muskets, scores, if not hundreds, which had been picked up, and were guarded for the Government.  A long ridge of fresh gravel rose before us.  A board stuck up in front of it bore this inscription, the first part of which was, I believe, not correct:  “The Rebel General Anderson and 80 Rebels are buried in this hole.”  Other smaller ridges were marked with the number of dead lying under them.  The whole ground was strewed with fragments of clothing, haversacks, canteens, cap-boxes, bullets, cartridge-boxes, cartridges, scraps of paper, portions of bread and meat.  I saw two soldiers’ caps that looked as though their owners had been shot through the head.  In several places I noticed dark red patches where a pool of blood had curdled and caked, as some poor fellow poured his life out on the sod.  I then wandered about in the cornfield.  It surprised me to notice, that, though there was every mark of hard fighting having taken place here, the Indian corn was not generally trodden down.  One of our cornfields is a kind of forest, and even when fighting, men avoid the tall stalks as if they were trees.  At the edge of this cornfield lay a gray horse, said