Ferry, as he passed us, called my name, and I started after him. At Charlotte\'s door we heard the greeting of her black maid. The maid\'s father, who of late had been nightly dressing Ferry\'s wound and mine, came to us in Ferry\'s room; and there my Captain turned to greet me, his face white with calamity. He took me caressingly by a button of my jacket. "Can you have your wound washed to-night before mine?"

"Why, certainly, if it\'s the least--"

"Yes, thank you. And down here in this room instead of upstairs?"

"Captain Ferry! if you knew how horribly it smells, you--"

"Ah! don\'t I know?" he said, and as I sat naked from throat to waist with the old negro laving the sores, Ferry scanned them narrowly. "They are not so bad, Dick; you think a few hours in the saddle will not make them worse?"

"Not if they\'re spent for you, Captain."

"Yes, for me; also for much better. We shall ride for--"

"You ride? Oh, Captain, you are in no condition--"

"Tst!" he laid a finger on my lips; "\'twill not be hard; we are not going on a scout--to jump fences." He began to make actual preparations, and presently helped me draw my shirt into place again over the clean bandages, while the old man went out after fresh water. "I am a hundred times more fit to go than to stay," he suddenly resumed. "I must go. Ah, idleness, there is nothing like idleness to drive a man mad; I must have something to do--to-night--at once." I wish I knew how to give the words with his quiet intensity.

I began to unclothe his wound. "May I ask one thing?"

"Ah! I know you; you want to ask am I taking that upper fork of the road. I am; \'tis for that I want you; so go you now to the stable, saddle our horses and bring them."

When I reached the front steps with them Ferry was at the gallery\'s edge, Miss Harper, Cécile and Harry were on three sides of him, and he was explaining away our astonishing departure. We were going to Hazlehurst, to issue clothing and shoes to those ragged and barefoot fellows we had seen that afternoon, and the light of whose tentless camp was yonder in the sky, now, toward Brookhaven. We were to go that way, confer with their officers, telegraph from town for authorizations to be sent to us at Hazlehurst, and then to push on to that place and be ready to issue the stuff when the trains should come up from Brookhaven bringing the brigade. While he spoke Camille and Estelle joined us. "No," he said, "to start any later, \'twould be too late."

To Harry\'s imploring protest that he, Ferry, was not fit to go to Hazlehurst horseback, he replied "Well! what we going to do? Those boys can\'t go to Big Black swamp bare-foot."

Our dear friends were too well aware of the untold trouble to say a word about his coming back, but Miss Harper\'s parting injunction to me was to write them.

The whole night and the following day were a toilsome time for us, but by fall of the next night the brigade had come in rags and passed newly clothed and shod, and in a room of the town tavern we dressed each other\'s hurts and sank to sleep on one bed. The night was hot, the pain of my wounds was like a great stone lying on them, and at the tragic moment of a frightful dream I awoke. "Captain," I murmured.

"Yes?"

"Did she give no reason?"

"No." A silence followed; then he said, "You know the reason, I think."

"Yes, I think I do; I think--"

"Well? don\'t be afraid to say it."

I got the words out in some form, that I believed Charlotte loved him deeply, as deeply, passionately, exaltedly, as ever a true woman loved a man--

"Ah, me!" he lifted his arms wide and knitted his fingers on his brow.

"And there is the whole trouble," I added. "She will not let you marry the woman whose--"

"Whose husband I have killed.... Ah, God!... Ah, my God! why was I chosen to do that?... And you think, Dick, it was not a question of time; that I did not ask, maybe a little too soon?"

"No, not as between sooner............