“I’ve brought the General’s order for your release at last, John.  It confines you to this district, however.”

Lamar shook his head.

“No parole for me!  My stake outside is too heavy for me to remain a prisoner on anything but compulsion.  I mean to escape, if I can.  Floy has nobody but me, you know, Charley.”

There was a moment’s silence.

“I wish,” said Dorr, half to himself, “the child was with her cousin Ruth.  If she could make her a woman like herself!”

“You are kind,” Lamar forced out, thinking of what might have been a year ago.

Dorr had forgotten.  He had just kissed little Ruth at the door-step, coming away:  thinking, as he walked up to camp, how her clear thought, narrow as it was, was making his own higher, more just; wondering if the tears on her face last night, when she got up from her knees after prayer, might not help as much in the great cause of truth as the life he was ready to give.  He was so used to his little wife now, that he could look to no hour of his past life, nor of the future coming ages of event and work, where she was not present,—­very flesh of his flesh, heart of his heart.  A gulf lay between them and the rest of the world.  It was hardly probable he could see her as a woman towards whom another man looked across the gulf, dumb, hopeless, defrauded of his right.

“She sent you some flowers, by the way, John,—­the last in the yard,—­and bade me be sure and bring you down with me.  Your own colors, you see?—­to put you in mind of home,”—­pointing to the crimson asters flaked with snow.

The man smiled faintly:  the smell of the flowers choked him:  he laid them aside.  God knows he was trying to wring out this bitter old thought:  he could not look in Dorr’s frank eyes while it was there.  He must escape to-night:  he never would come near them again, in this world, or beyond death,—­never!  He thought of that like a man going to drag through eternity with half his soul gone.  Very well:  there was man enough left in him to work honestly and bravely, and to thank God for that good pure love he yet had.  He turned to Dorr with a flushed face, and began talking of Floy in hearty earnest,—­glancing at Ben coming up the hill, thinking that escape depended on him.

“I ordered your man up,” said Captain Dorr.  “Some canting Abolitionist had him open-mouthed down there.”

The negro came in, and stood in the corner, listening while they talked.  A gigantic fellow, with a gladiator’s muscles.  Stronger than that Yankee captain, he thought,—­than either of them:  better breathed,—­drawing the air into his brawny chest.  “A man and a brother.”  Did the fool think he didn’t know that before?  He had a contempt for Dave and his like.  Lamar would have told you Dave’s words were true, but despised the man as a crude, unlicked bigot.  Ben did the same, with no words for the idea.  The negro instinct in him recognized