A prayer was then offered by the minister at his bedside: his lips
moved as he repeated the words. As the prayer ended he murmured:--
"I am going fast now--I am resigned. God's will be done!"[1]
[Footnote 1: His words.]
As the words escaped from his lips, he expired.
BOOK III.
BEHIND THE SCENES.
I.
WHAT I DID NOT SEE.
I was not at Stuart's bedside when he died. While aiding the rest to
hold him in the saddle, I had been shot through the shoulder; and
twenty-four hours afterward I lay, at the house of a friend in
Richmond, turning and tossing with fever.
In my delirium I heard a mournful tolling of bells. It was many days,
however, before I knew that they were tolling for Stuart.
When, at last, after more than a month's confinement to my bed, I rose,
and began to totter about,--pale, faint, and weak, but convalescent--my
great loss, for the first time, struck me in all its force.
Where should I turn now--and whither should I go? Jackson dead at
Chancellorsville--Stuart at Yellow Tavern--thenceforth I seemed to have
lost my support, to grope and totter in darkness, without a guide!
These two kings of battle had gone down in the storm, and, like the
Knight of Arthur, I looked around me, with vacant and inquiring eyes,
asking whither I was now to direct my steps, and what work I should
work in the coming years.
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