urage to endure. He worked then so merrily and with such
good heart, that an admiring inspector more than hinted "at the pity it
was to see a decent young fellow like him shut up in the pen yonder."

"So I think," returned Drake, calmly, cutting away at his board.

The official edged a little closer.

"Why don't you come over to us, then? The Confederacy gives good wages.
Our Government knows how to pay its men."

"Right there!" retorted Drake. "The Confederacy pays its servants in
death and ruin, which, as you say, are the just wages of a traitor. As
for me, I want no more of Georgia soil than will make me a grave. That
is as much as a man can own here now and be honest."

It was then, from some occult connection of ideas too subtile for
searching out, that he imagined, first, a history of the Stockade
Prison. He secured a number of long, thin boards, and planed them
smooth, for foolscap, pointed bits of wood for pens, manufactured his
ink from the rust of some old nails, and made himself a knife by
grinding two pieces of iron hoop one upon the other, and, his work on
the cook-house at an end, set bravely about his history, when Fate
nipped it, as she has done many a more promising one before it; for even
when on the final flourish of his title, he heard a sound between a
groan and a sigh, and, turning, saw Corny Keegan, a strapping Irishman,
and sergeant in his regiment, lying near him. Drake put the tail on his
_n_, and then some uneasy consciousness would have him look again over
the edge of his board at the sergeant; for, though there were scores of
men lying within view on the ground, there was something in the "give"
and laxity of Corny's posture that augured ill for him in Drake's
experienced eyes, and, laying the history aside, he went over and
kneeled down beside him. The man's eyes were closed, and a dull,
yellowish pallor had taken the place of the usual brick tint of his
face. Drake essayed to lift his heavy head and shoulders; but Corny
settled back again with a groan.

"Och! wurra! Musther Talcott, lave me alone. It's dead I am, kilt
intirely, wid the wakeness. Divil's the bit of wood I've had these two
days, and not a cint or a frind to the fore, and I'm jist afther mixin'
the male here with wather, thinkin' to ate it that way, but it stuck in
me throat, and I'm all on a thrimble, and it's a gone man is Corny
Keegan; though it's not fur meself that I'd make moan, sence it's aisier
dyin' than livin'