“Captain,” said Robert, with a tone of bitterness in his voice, “what had we to be grateful for?  For ages of poverty, ignorance, and slavery?  I think if anybody should be grateful, it is the people who have enslaved us and lived off our labor for generations.  Captain, I used to know a poor old woman who couldn’t bear to hear any one play on the piano.”

“Is that so?  Why, I always heard that colored people were a musical race.”

“So we are; but that poor woman’s daughter was sold, and her mistress took the money to buy a piano.  Her mother could never bear to hear a sound from it.”

“Poor woman!” exclaimed Captain Sybil, sympathetically; “I suppose it seemed as if the wail of her daughter was blending with the tones of the instrument.  I think, Robert, there is a great deal more in the colored people than we give them credit for.  Did you know Captain Sellers?”

“The officer who escaped from prison and got back to our lines?” asked Robert.

“Yes.  Well, he had quite an experience in trying to escape.  He came to an aged couple, who hid him in their cabin and shared their humble food with him.  They gave him some corn-bread, bacon, and coffee which he thought was made of scorched bran.  But he said that he never ate a meal that he relished more than the one he took with them.  Just before he went they knelt down and prayed with him.  It seemed as if his very hair stood on his head, their prayer was so solemn.  As he was going away the man took some shingles and nailed them on his shoes to throw the bloodhounds off his track.  I don’t think he will ever cease to feel kindly towards colored people.  I do wonder what has become of the boys?  What can keep them so long?”

Just as Captain Sybil and Robert were wondering at the delay of Tom and the soldiers they heard the measured tread of men who were slowly bearing a burden.  They were carrying Tom Anderson to the hospital, fearfully wounded, and nigh to death.  His face was distorted, and the blood was streaming from his wounds.  His respiration was faint, his pulse hurried, as if life were trembling on its frailest cords.

Robert and Captain Sybil hastened at once towards the wounded man.  On Robert’s face was a look of intense anguish, as he bent pityingly over his friend.

“O, this is dreadful!  How did it happen?” cried Robert.

Captain Sybil, pressing anxiously forward, repeated Robert’s question.

“Captain,” said one of the young soldiers, advancing and saluting his superior officer, “we were all in the boat when it struck against a mud bank, and there was not strength enough among us to shove her back into the water.  Just then the Rebels opened fire upon us.  For awhile we lay down in the boat, but still they kept firing.  Tom took in the whole situation, and said:  ’Someone must die to get us out of this.  I mought’s well be him as any.  You are soldiers and can fight.  If they kill me, it is nuthin’.’  So Tom leaped out to shove the boat into the water.  Just then the Rebel bullets began to rain around him.  He received seven or eight of them, and I’m afraid there is no hope for him.”