“How providential!  Ah, if our poor Wesley could find some such friends!  He is very low.  He recognizes no one.  Unless papa can get leave to take him North—­I am afraid of the worst.  Indeed, I doubt whether he could stand so long a journey.  You must stay the day with us.  I am so lonely, and I dread being more lonely still when papa leaves this evening.”

Dick remained until late in the afternoon, sending word to Merry, who came promptly to the aid of the afflicted.  The next day Dick left his aunt at the cottage with Kate, and warning them that he should be gone all day, and perhaps not see them until the next morning, he set off for Rosedale, where he told Jack Kate’s plight.  Vincent heard the story, too, and when it was ended he said, decisively: 

“Jack, we must send for them.  It would never do to have the story told in Acredale that you had found friends in the South—­because you are a Democrat, and Boone was thrust into negro quarters because he is an abolitionist.”

It was the very thought on Jack’s mind, and straightway the carriage was made ready, with ample pillows and what not.  Dick set out in great state, filled with the importance of his mission and the glory of Jack’s cordial praises.  He was to stop on the way through town and carry the Atterbury’s family physician to direct the removal.  When he appeared before Kate, with Mrs. Atterbury’s commands that she and her brother should make Rosedale their home until the invalid could be removed North, the poor girl broke down in the sudden sense of relief—­the certainty of salvation to the slowly dying brother.  The physician spent many hours redressing the wounds.  Gangrene had begun to eat away the flesh of the head above the temple, and poor Wesley was unrecognizable.  He was quite unconscious of the burning bromine and the clipping of flesh that the skillful hand of the practitioner carried on.  When the little group started on the long journey, the invalid looked more like himself than he had since Kate found him.  The drive lasted many hours.  Wesley was stretched in an ambulance, Kate sitting on the seat with the driver, the physician and Dick following in the carriage.  Merry went back to the city house, where her nephew was to return as soon as Wesley had been delivered at Rosedale.  Her charge placed in the hands of the kind hostess, Mrs. Atterbury, Kate broke down.  She had borne up while her head and heart alone stood between her brother and death; but now, relieved of the strain, she fell into an alarming fever.  A Williamsburg veteran, who had practiced in that ancient college town, since the early days of the century, took the Richmond surgeon’s place, and the gay summer house became, for the time, a hospital.

Meanwhile the rebel provost-marshal had simplified Dick’s task a good deal.  An order was issued that all houses where wounded or ailing men were lying should signalize the fact by a yellow flag or ribbon, attached to the front in a conspicuous place.  Thus directed, Dick walked street after street, asking to see the wounded; and the fourth day, coming to a residence, rather handsomer than the others on the street, not two blocks from Mrs. Raines, Jack’s Samaritan, he found a wasted figure, with bandaged head and unmeaning eyes, that he recognized as Barney.