One of the prisoners, a ruddy-cheeked young fellow in private's clothes,
looked up and touched his cap.
"Thank you, sir, I hope we'll meet at the front," he said, in a rich Irish
brogue. Then he passed on to Libby prison, while Dan turned from the window
and lay watching the surgeon's faces as they probed for bullets.
It was a long unceiled building, filled with bright daylight and the
buzzing of countless flies. Women, who had volunteered for the service,
passed swiftly over the creaking boards, or knelt beside the pallets as
they bathed the shattered limbs with steady fingers. Here and there a child
held a glass of water to a man who could not raise himself, or sat fanning
the flies from a pallid face. None was too old nor too young where there
was work for all.
A stir passed through the group about the long pine table, and one of the
surgeons, wiping the sweat from his brow, came over to where Dan lay, and
stopped to take breath beside the window.
"By Jove, that man died game," he said, shaking his handkerchief at the
flies. "We took both his legs off at the knee, and he just gripped the
table hard and never winked an eyelash. I told him it would kill him, but
he said he'd be hanged if he didn't take his chance--and he took it and
died. Talk to me about nerve, that fellow had the cleanest grit I ever
saw."
Dan's pulses fluttered, as they always did at an example of pure pluck.
"What's his regiment?" he asked, watching the two slaves who, followed by
their mistresses, were bringing the body back to the stretcher.
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