The following is the descriptive story of the soldiers final hours. Story is taken from the book "Southern Home in War Times" by Rose Harlow Warren.

"No time for sentiment, no time to dread the possible horrors that threatened them, from the real work and the real suffering was at hand. Elizabeth was to frail to help, and Mam' Phyllis forced her gently to give up her self-imposed task and retire to her own apartment in company with Lucy and little Egbert.

Mose and Ephraim were disposing as nearly as possible to rest the wounded soldier when she returned, and Madeline followed the two soldiers to the front porch."We are more than sorry, Miss, to leave you such a charge as this, but it won't be for long, and the others are quiet enough."

"If the case was not so hopeless, we would feel differently about it," she returned. "If only we might save his life to his country, but that is out of the question, I am afraid."

"God knows," was the return. It is surprising to know how little there is to be done in a case of this kind. Water, icy cold from the well, for applications, and to in a small degree quench the fiery thirst which consumed him. By the dim light of a tallow candle, Madeline and Mam' Phyllis kept watch, while Ephraim and Mose, just inside the door, stood in readiness to help, should they be needed. The water for which the sufferer begged so piteously could not reach the fever, for ere it could do so the gaping wound would discharge it upon the floor.

"Oh, Miss," he exclaimed in a moment of consciousness, "I do not want to die."

"The South needs you so badly," she replied; "it is hard, but you must not think of that; He who cares for the sparrows will not desert His children in their extremity. “No," wearily, "I reckon not; but, Miss, I am not ready to die. I have been wild and reckless. My mother's teachings have almost faded from my mind. Until now I have never known fear, but now I shudder and draw back like a child in the dark. “And Madeline, with the faith like unto that of a little child, pointed the way to this stranger who was going out into an unknown country by an untried way. Between the paroxysms of pain and thirst she laid bare the simple plan so plain that "a wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err."

He was almost gone, the last struggle was nearly over when Madeline, forgetting herself, forgetting her timidity, forgetting all save that this man was a fellow-creature in need, slipped down by the side of the cot, and after an appeal to that Ear which is always open to the cry of human distress, plead for mercy and forgiveness for this sin-sick soul and consigned the departing spirit to its Maker. When she rose from her knees, a smile played across the drawn features and almost imperceptibly he whispered: "Lift me up, I am not afraid; 'tis better now," and only a girl though she was," and alone, for Mam' Phyllis had left the room for a moment, she climbed up back of him on the cot and, lifting his shoulders from the pillow, held him by contact with her body that he might breathe a little more easily. And thus it was that death relieved him, and Mam' Phyllis, returning, found her almost fainting with the dead man in her arms.

Mrs. Hether came in the early morning to share the responsibility with her friends, and that evening they buried him in a gun box, that coffin of so many of the sons of the Southland. They draped the box in a tattered Confederate flag which Mose had picked up on the battle ground, and Mose and Ephraim, assisted by two of Mrs. Hether's menservants, aided by Lucy and Sarah, carried, by means of poles cut out from the woods in lieu of handles, the mortal part of this stranger up the hill to the family burying grounds and consigned it to the earth to which we all must sooner or later return.

Standing around the open grave, Mrs. Hether, as the elder, read the burial service and Elizabeth and Madeline and the servants repeated in concert:" Earth to earth and ashes to ashes."

Then, with a short prayer imperfectly offered, but, like all sincere supplications to the Father of us all, surely heard and answered in His own good way, they mingled the sods of the graveyard with the dust."