The sun was
yet hanging over the trees in the woods--a ball of sullen red fire
lighting up the hiding place of the last poor devil for the eyes of the
avenging hosts who were sweeping on. If it were night it would be all
right. But this was no place for a man with an ounce of sense in broad
daylight. The sharpshooters would see him in that tall tree sure. They
couldn't take him prisoner up there--they would shoot him like a
squirrel just to see him tumble and, by the Lord Harry, they would do
it, too!
He got down from the tree faster than he climbed up and from the edge of
the woods spied a dense swamp. He never stopped until he reached the
centre of it, and dropped flat on his stomach.
"Thank God, at last!" he sighed.
The Northern army fleeing for Washington had left on the field
twenty-eight guns, four thousand muskets, nine regimental flags, four
hundred and eighty-one dead, a thousand and eleven wounded and fourteen
hundred captured. The road to the rear was literally sown with pistols,
knapsacks, blankets, haversacks, wagons, tools and hospital stores.
And saddest of all the wreck, lay the bright new handcuffs with coils of
hang-man's rope scattered everywhere.
The Southern army had lost three hundred and eighty-seven killed,
including two brigadier generals, Bee and Barton, and fifteen hundred
wounded.
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