Robert Stiles, Four years under Marse Robert

[293] “Hello, company I; man of yours dead out here!” We ran around the angle of the work, and there lay poor Scott, prone in the ditch and almost covered with canteens. We picked him up and bore him tenderly into the trench, and, as we laid him down and composed his limbs, manly tears dropped upon his still face. Each man disengaged and took his own canteen from the slumbering water-carrier. We did not “pour the water out to the Lord,” as David did when the “three mightiest brake through the host of the Philistines and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem that was by the gate” --albeit, in a truer sense than David spoke, this water was the very “blood of this man.”

It was about six o'clock in the evening of one of the days that followed close upon the great fight that there befell the company the very saddest loss it had yet experienced. An order had come to Captain McCarthy, from General Alexander, commanding the artillery corps, directing that the effect of the fire of several Howitzers, which were operating as mortars, from a position immediately back of the Howitzer guns, should be carefully observed and reported to him. The captain, appreciating at once the responsibility and the peril of the work, with characteristic chivalry, determined to divide it between himself and one of the most competent and careful men in the company. He was not the man to shrink, or slur over, or postpone his own part in any duty, and immediately stationed himself where he could thoroughly discharge it. He had taken his stand but a few moments when he fell back among his men, his brain pierced by a sharpshooter's bullet. The detachment sprang to his aid, but too late even to prevent his fall. His broad breast heaved once or twice as they knelt about him, and it was all over. The men broke down utterly and sobbed like children.

We never found his hat. While his boys were still gazing at him through their tears a Mississippi soldier came working, his way along the lines, from a point some one hundred feet or more to the right, holding in his hand a little piece of brass, and as he approached the group said: “This here thing has just fell at my feet. I reckon it belongs to some of you artillery fellows;” and then, looking at the