here is he?" demanded Stephen, fired with a desire to see the man.

"Well, he ain't a great ways from here," said the Colonel. "Perhaps you
might be able to do something for him," he continued thoughtfully. "I'd
hate to see him die. The doctor says he'll pull through if he can get
care and good air and good food." He seized Stephen's arm in a fierce
grip. "You ain't fooling?" he said.

"Indeed I am not," said Stephen.

"No," said the Colonel, thoughtfully, as to himself, "you don't look like
the man to fool."

Whereupon he set out with great strides, in marked contrast to his former
languorous gait, and after a while they came to a sort of gorge, where
the street ran between high banks of clay. There Stephen saw the
magazines which the Confederates had dug out, and of which he had heard.
But he saw something, too, of which he had not heard, Colonel Catesby
Jennison stopped before an open doorway in the yellow bank and knocked. A
woman's voice called softly to him to enter.

They went into a room hewn out of the solid clay. Carpet was stretched on
the floor, paper was on the walls, and even a picture. There was a little
window cut like a port in a prison cell, and under it a bed, beside which
a middle-aged lady was seated. She had a kindly face which seemed to
Stephen a little pinched as she turned to them with a gesture of
restraint. She pointed to the bed, where a sheet lay limply over the
angles of a wasted frame. The face was to the wall.

"Hush!" said the lady,--"it is the first time in two days that he has
slept."

But the sleeper stirred wearily, and woke with a start. He turned over.
The face, so yellow and peaked, was of the type that grows even more
handsome in sickness, and in the great fever-stricken eyes a high spirit
burned. For an instant only the man stared at Stephen, and then he
dragged himself to the wall.

The eyes of the other two were both fixed on the young Union Captain.

"My God!" cried Jennison, seizing Stephen's rigid arm, "does he look as
bad as that? We've seen him every day."

"I--I know him," answered Stephen. He stepped quickly to the bedside, and
bent over it. "Colfax!" he said. "Colfax!"

"This is too much, Jennison," came from the bed a voice that was
pitifully weak; "why do you bring Yankees in here?"

"Captain Brice is a friend of yours, Colfax," said the Colonel, tugging
at his mustache.

"Brice?" repeated Clarence, "Brice? Does he come from St. Louis?"

"Do you come