“While I was considering the case, in came the master of the mansion,—­a thin, stooped, tired-looking little fellow,—­’Sam,’ he told us, was his name; then proceeded to narrate how he had found the body, and knew the uniform, and was kind and tender with it because of its dress, ’for you see, sah, we darkies is all Union folks’; how he had brought it up in the night, for fear of his Secesh master, and made a coffin for it, and buried it decently.  After that he took us out to a little spot of fresh earth, covered with leaves and twigs, and, digging down, we came to a rough pine box made as well as the poor fellow knew how to put it together.  Opening it, we found all that was left of poor Hunt, respectably clad in a coarse, clean white garment which Sam’s wife had made as nicely as she could out of her one pair of sheets.  ’It wa’n’t much,’ said the good soul, with tears in her eyes, ’it wa’n’t much we’s could do for him, but I washed him, and dressed him, peart as I could, and Sam and me, we buried him.  We wished, both on us, that we could have done heaps more for him, but we did all that we could,’—­which, indeed, was plain enough to be seen.

“Before we went away, Sam brought from a little hole, which he burrowed in the floor of his cabin, a something, done up in dirty old rags; and when we opened it, what under the heavens do you suppose we found?  You’ll never guess.  Three hundred dollars in bank-bills, and some important papers, which he had taken and hid,—­concealed them even from his wife, because, he said, the guerillas often came round, and they might frighten her into giving them up if she knew they were there.

“I collapsed at that, and stood with open mouth, watching for the next proceeding.  I knew there was to be some more of it, and there was.  Hunt’s brother offered back half the money; offered it! why, he tried to force it on the fellow, and couldn’t.  His master wouldn’t let him buy himself and his wife,—­I suspect, out of sheer cussedness,—­and he hadn’t any other use for money, he said.  Besides, he didn’t want to take, and wouldn’t take, anything that looked like pay for doing aught for a ‘Linkum sojer,’ alive or dead.

“‘They’se going to make us all free, sometime,’ he said, ’that’s enough.  Don’t look like it, jest yet, I knows; but I lives in faith; it’ll come byumby’ When the fellow said that, I declare to you, Surrey, I felt like hiding my face.  At last I began to comprehend what your indignation meant against the order forbidding slaves coming into our lines, and commanding their return when they succeed in entering.  Just then we all seemed to me meaner than dirt.”

“As we are; and, as dirt, deserve to be trampled underfoot, beaten, defeated, till we’re ready to stand up and fight like men in this struggle.”

“Amen to that, Colonel,” added Whittlesly.

“Well, I’m pretty nearly ready to say so myself,” finished Brooks, half reluctantly.