It was not until the next day that the red tape of the establishment was so far cut as to warrant the surgeon in charge in making a personal inspection of the two invalids.  He at once, and in indignant astonishment, pronounced the two untouched by the disease set against their names in their papers of admission.  Early in the afternoon they were carried on a stretcher to a clean, fresh tent on the sandy beach, where the laurel bushes almost ran into the water.  Letters had been dispatched to Olympia in forming her that Jack was found, and urging her to come on at once.  The next evening the three ladies arrived—­Mrs. Sprague, Olympia, and Kate.  With them they brought a renowned physician who had been uniformly successful in treating maladies of the sort the lads were described as suffering.

Days of painful anxiety followed.  Once, all hope of Dick was abandoned, and his aunts were telegraphed for.  But, in the end, he opened his big blue eyes, sane and convalescent.  There was rapid mending after this, you may be sure.  Kate had, through Olympia’s unobtrusive manoeuvring, been forced to bear the burden of Jack’s nursing, and, somehow, when that impatient warrior mingled amorous pleadings with his early consciousness, she forgot upon which side the burden of repentance and forgiving lay.  She listened with gentle serenity to his protestations, checking him only by the threat to quit the place and return to her father.

During all this, Rosa was divided in her mind.  She resented the assiduity of Jones in the recovery of Dick.  That reticent person had installed himself in Dick’s tent and never quitted the lad, day or night, unless to relinquish him to Rosa’s arbitrary hand.  When, one day, Pliny and Merry Perley entered the tent, Jones changed color.  The two ladies, not heeding the stranger, fell upon the convalescent on the cot, and Jones slipped away.  Thereafter Rosa had her invalid to herself, Jones only reappearing at night, to keep the vigils of the dark.  A month later, the invalids were strong enough to be removed.  An inquiry had been set on foot to account for the presence of the two Union soldiers among the rebel prisoners.  The result was confusing, however.  The facts seemed to point out design in the original entry of the young men’s names at Hampton, where they had been taken when brought in by the outposts.

The dispersion of the rest of their companions from Richmond was accounted for by furloughs granted them so soon as they reached the provost-marshal’s office.  Just before leaving Point Lookout Jack received a much-directed letter that gave signs of having been in every mail-bag in the Army of the Potomac.  It was from Barney Moore, bristling with wonder and turgid with woful lamentation at Jack’s coldness in not writing him.  He had been sent by mistake to Ship Island, near New Orleans, to join his regiment, and had only at the writing of the letter reached Washington, where the Caribees were expected every day to move to the Peninsula in McClellan’s new campaign.