McGregor sat beside him with a finger on the bounding pulse and understood its meaning and the tale it told.  “It will not be long, John,” and then with attention so concentrated as not even to note the one stir of the tortured body or to hear the long-drawn groan of pain, he rose to his feet.  “All right, John—­it’s only a slug—­lucky it was not a musket ball.”  He laid a tender hand on the sweating brow, shot a dose of morphia into the right arm, and added, “You will get well with a stiff joint.  Now go to sleep.  The right arm is sound, a flesh-wound.”

“Thanks,” said John, “we are even now, Tom.  Captain Blake telegraphed your father, Tom—­but write, please.”

“To whom, John?”

“To Leila—­but do not alarm them.”

“I will write.  In a week or two you must go home.  That is the medicine you need most.  You will still have some pain, but you will not lose the arm.”

“Thank you—­but what of the army?  I am a bit confused as to time.  Parke attacked on the second of April, I think.  What day is this?”

“Oh, they got out of Petersburg that night—­out of Richmond too.  Lee is done for—­a day or two will end it.”

“Thank God,” murmured John, “but I am so sorry for Lee.”

“Can’t say I am.”

“Oh, that blessed morphia!”

“Well, go to sleep—­I will see you again shortly.  I have other fellows to look after.  In a few minutes you will be easy.  Draw the fly-nets, orderly.”

Of all that followed John Penhallow in later years remembered most distinctly the half hour of astonishing relief from pain.  As his senses one by one went off guard, he seemed to himself to be watching with increase of ease the departure of some material tormentor.  In after years he recalled with far less readiness the days of varied torment which required more and more morphia.  Why I know not, the remembrance of pain as time goes by is far less permanent than that of relief or of an hour of radiant happiness.  Long days of suffering followed as the tortured nerves recorded their far-spread effects in the waste of the body and that failure of emotional control which even the most courageous feel when long under the tyranny of continuous pain.  McGregor watched him with anxiety and such help as was possible.  On the tenth of April John awakened after a night of assisted sleep to find himself nearly free from pain.  Tom came early into the ward.

“Good news, John,” he said.  “Lee has surrendered.  You look better.  Your resignation will be accepted, and I have a leave of absence.  Economy is the rule.  We are sending the wounded north in ship-loads.  Home!  Home! old fellow, in a week.”

The man on the cot looked up.  “You have a letter, I see,” and as he spoke broke into childlike tears, for so did long suffering deal with the most self-controlled in those terrible years, which we do well to forgive, and to remember with pride not for ourselves alone.  The child-man on the bed murmured, “Home was too much for me.”