“Oh, pray if you want to.  What’s the good?  If you won’t telegraph the Squire, get me whisky; and if you won’t do that, go away.  Talk about God and praying when I’m to be murdered just because my father drank!  I don’t want any praying—­I don’t believe in it—­you just go away and get me some whisky.  The Squire might have saved me—­I wanted to quit from drink and he just told me to get out—­and I did.  I hate him and—­you.”

Rivers stood up.  “May God help and pity you,” he said, and so left him.

He slept none, and rising early, prayed fervently for this wrecked soul.  As he walked at six in the morning to the prison hut, he thought over the man who long ago had so defeated him.  He had seemed to him more feeble in mind and less cunning in his statements than had been the case in former days.  He concluded that he was in the state of a man used to drinking whisky and for a time deprived of it.  When he met him moving under guard from the prison, he felt sure that his conclusion had been correct.

As Rivers came up, the officer in charge said, “If, sir, as a clergyman you desire to walk beside this man, there is no objection.”

“Oh, let him come,” said Peter, with a defiant air.  Some one pitiful had indulged the fated man with the liquor he craved.

Rivers took his place beside Peter as the guards at his side fell back.  Soldiers off duty, many blacks and other camp-followers, gathered in silence as the little procession moved over the snow, noiseless except for the tramp of many feet and the rumble of the cart in which was an empty coffin.

“Can I do anything for you?” said Rivers, turning toward the flushed face at his side.

“No—­you can’t.”  The man smelled horribly of whisky; the charitable aid must have been ample.

“Is there any message you want me to carry?”

“Message—­who would I send messages to?” In fact, Rivers did not know.  He was appalled at a man going half drunk to death.  He moved on, for a little while at the end of his resources.

“Even yet,” he whispered, “there is time to repent and ask God to pardon a wasted life.”  Peter made no reply and then they were in the open space on one side of a hollow square.  On three sides the regiment stood intent as the group came near.  “Even yet,” murmured Rivers.

Of a sudden Peter’s face became white.  He said, “I want to tell you one thing—­I want you to tell him.  I shot the Squire at Gettysburg—­I wish I had killed him—­I thought I had.  There!—­I always did get even.”

“Stand back, sir, please,” said a captain.  Rivers was dumb with the horror of it and stepped aside.  The last words he would have said choked him in the attempt to speak.

Six soldiers took their places before the man who stood with his hands tied behind his back, his face white, the muscles twitching, while a bandage was tied over his eyes.

“He wants to speak to you, sir,” said the captain.