He found it under fire; and long
afterward Jim Wetherby was fond of relating how quietly the lame
civilian listened to the shells shrieking over and exploding
around him. Thus Martine learned all that could be gathered of
Nichol's fate, and then, ill and exhausted, he turned his face
northward. He felt that it would be a hopeless task to renew his
search on the battlefield, much of which had been burned over. He
also had the conviction it would be fatal to him to look upon its
unspeakable horrors, and breathe again its pestilential air.
He was a sick man when he arrived at home, but was able to relate
modestly in outline the history of his efforts, softening and
concealing much that he had witnessed. In the delirium of fever
which followed, they learned more fully of what he had endured, of
how he had forced himself to look upon things which, reproduced in
his ravings, almost froze the blood of his watchers.
Helen Kemble felt that her cup of bitterness had been filled anew,
yet the distraction of a new grief, in which there was a certain
remorseful self-reproach, had the effect of blunting the sharp
edge of her first sorrow.
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