It was a question that did
not concern them for the present, so utter was their exhaustion. As
night came and the battle ceased they dropped where they were and sank
into sleep or a stupor that was deeper than sleep.
But Dick this time did neither. His nervous system had been strained so
severely that it was impossible for him to keep still. He had found that
all of his friends had received wounds, although they were too slight
to put them out of action. But the Winchester regiment had suffered
terribly again. It did not have a hundred men left fit for service,
and even at that it had got off better than some others. In one of the
Virginia regiments under Longstreet only fourteen men had been left
unhurt.
Dick stood beside his colonel--Warner and Pennington were lying in a
stupor--and he was appalled. The battle had been fought within a narrow
area, and the tremendous destruction was visible in the moonlight,
heaped up everywhere. Colonel Winchester was as much shaken as he,
and the two, the man and the boy, walked toward the picket line, drawn by
a sort of hideous fascination, as they looked upon the area of conflict.
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