“So you’re worrying for fear you’ll inherit some money?” Lincoln asked meditatively.

“Of course,” the boy threw back impatiently.  “Of course, it would be a shame if it came to Nellie and me, for we couldn’t ever make her take it.  We don’t need it—­I can look after Nellie and myself,” he said proudly, with a quick, tossing motion of his fair head that was like the motion of a spirited, thoroughbred horse.  They had arrived at the prison.  “I can get you through all right.  They all know me here,” he spoke over his shoulder reassuringly to the President with a friendly glance.  Dashing down the corridors in front, he did not see the guards salute the tall figure which followed him; too preoccupied to wonder at the ease of their entrance, he flew along through the big building, and behind him in large strides came his friend.

A young man—­almost a boy, too—­of twenty-three or twenty-four, his handsome face a white shadow, lay propped against the pillows, watching the door eagerly as they entered.

“Good boy, Warry,” he greeted the little fellow; “you’ve got me a lawyer,” and the pale features lighted with a smile of such radiance as seemed incongruous in this gruesome place.  He held out his hand to the man who swung toward him, looming mountainous behind his brother’s slight figure.  “Thank you for coming,” he said cordially, and in his tone was the same air of a grand seigneur as in the lad’s.  Suddenly a spasm of pain caught him, his head fell into the pillows, his muscles twisted, his arm about the neck of the kneeling boy tightened convulsively.  Yet while the agony still held him he was smiling again with gay courage.  “It nearly blew me away,” he whispered, his voice shaking, but his eyes bright with amusement.  “We’d better get to work before one of those little breezes carries me too far.  There’s pen and ink on the table, Mr.—­my brother did not tell me your name.”

“Your brother and I met informally,” the other answered, setting the materials in order for writing.  “He charged into me like a young steer,” and the boy, out of his deep trouble, laughed delightedly.  “My name is Lincoln.”

The young officer regarded him.  “That’s a good name from your standpoint—­you are, I take it, a Northerner?”

The deep eyes smiled whimsically.  “I’m on that side of the fence.  You may call me a Yankee if you’d like.”

“There’s something about you, Mr. Lincoln,” the young Georgian answered gravely, with a kindly and unconscious condescension, “which makes me wish to call you, if I may, a friend.”

He had that happy instinct which shapes a sentence to fall on its smoothest surface, and the President, in whom the same instinct was strong, felt a quick comradeship with this enemy who, about to die, saluted him.  He put out his great fist swiftly.  “Shake hands,” he said.  “Friends it is.”

“‘Till death us do part,’” said the officer slowly, and smiled, and then threw back his head with a gesture like the boy’s.  “We must do the will,” he said peremptorily.