So thorough was my confidence in the brave men who were sure to
repel the invaders that all sense of danger passed away.
My own sleeping-room was in a house situated at the foot of the hill.
I could have gone there and slept securely, but dared not leave my
charges. Sinking upon the rough lounge in my office, intending only to
rest, I fell fast asleep. I was awakened by one of the nurses, who had
come to say that I was needed by a patient whom he believed to be
dying, and who lay in a ward on the other side of the square.
As we passed out into the street, another beautiful morning was
dawning. Upon entering Ward No. 9, we found most of the patients
asleep. But in one corner, between two windows which let in the
fast-increasing light, lay an elderly man, calmly breathing his life
away. The morning breeze stirred the thin gray hair upon his hollow
temples, rustling the leaves of the Bible which lay upon his pillow.
Stooping over him to feel the fluttering pulse, and to wipe the clammy
sweat from brow and hands, I saw that he was indeed dying, a victim of
that dreadful scourge that decimated the ranks of the Confederate
armies more surely than many battles,--dysentery,--which, if not cured
in the earlier stages, resulted too surely, as now, in consumption of
the bowels.
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