k," he added--well aware how much in need his assistant stood of
creature comfort of some surreptitious and forbidden kind. The man was
back in a moment, the coat rolled on his arm.

"I'll take it," said Gray simply. "You needn't come."

"Go on with it!" ordered the sergeant as the soldier hesitated. "D'ye
think the service has gone to the devil and officers are runnin' errands
for enlisted men? An' get back inside two minutes, too," he added with
portent in his tone. The subaltern of hardly two months' service felt the
implied rebuke of the soldier of over twenty years' and meekly accepted
the amendment, but--a thought occurred to him: He had promised Morton
paper, envelopes and stamps and the day's newspapers--the lad seemed
strangely eager to get all the latter, and vaguely Billy remembered
having heard that Canker considered giving papers to prisoners as
equivalent to aid and comfort to the enemy.

"Take it by way of my tent," said he as they started, and, once there it
took time to find things. "Go back to the sergeant-major and tell him I
sent you," said Gray, after another search. "He needs you on those
papers."

And when the officer of the guard returned to the guardhouse and went in
to the prisoner, the sergeant saw--and others saw--that, rolled in the
soldier's overcoat he carried on his arm, was a bundle done up in
newspaper. Moreover, a scrap of conversation was overheard.

"There's no one at the General's," said the officer. "I see no way
of--fixing it before morning."

"My God, lieutenant! There--must be some way out of it! The morning will
be too late."

"Then I'll do what I can for you to-night," said Mr. Gray as he turned
and hurriedly left the guardroom--a dozen men standing stiffly about the
walls and doorway and staring with impassive faces straight to the front.
Again, the young officer had left the post of the guard and gone up into
camp, while far and near through the dim, fog-swept aisles of a score of
camps the bugles and trumpets were wailing the signal for "lights out,"
and shadowy forms with coat collars turned up about the ears or capes
muffled around the neck, scurried about the company streets ordering
laughter and talk to cease. A covered carriage was standing at the curb
outside the officers' gate--as a certain hole in the fence was
designated--and the sentry there posted remembered that the officer of
the guard came hurrying out and asked the driver if he was engaged. "I'm
waiti