“I guess you know him, Ma’am?”

“You are right.  Do you?”

“As much as any one was able to, Ma’am.”

“Why do you say ‘was,’ as if the man were dead and gone?”

“I s’pose because I know he’ll have to go.  He’s got a bad jab in the breast, an’ is bleedin’ inside, the Doctor says.  He don’t suffer any, only gets weaker ‘n’ weaker every minute.  I’ve been fannin’ him this long while, an’ he’s talked a little; but he don’t know me now, so he’s most gone, I guess.”

There was so much sorrow and affection in the boy’s face, that I remembered something, and asked, with redoubled interest,—­

“Are you the one that brought him off?  I was told about a boy who nearly lost his life in saving that of his mate.”

I dare say the young fellow blushed, as any modest lad might have done; I could not see it, but I heard the chuckle of satisfaction that escaped him, as he glanced from his shattered arm and bandaged side to the pale figure opposite.

“Lord, Ma’am, that’s nothin’; we boys always stan’ by one another, an’ I warn’t goin’ to leave him to be tormented any more by them cussed Rebs.  He’s been a slave once, though he don’t look half so much like it as me, an’ I was born in Boston.”

He did not; for the speaker was as black as the ace of spades,—­being a sturdy specimen, the knave of clubs would perhaps be a fitter representative,—­but the dark freeman looked at the white slave with the pitiful, yet puzzled expression I have so often seen on the faces of our wisest men, when this tangled question of Slavery presents itself, asking to be cut or patiently undone.

“Tell me what you know of this man; for, even if he were awake, he is too weak to talk.”

“I never saw him till I joined the regiment, an’ no one ’peared to have got much out of him.  He was a shut-up sort of feller, an’ didn’t seem to care for anything but gettin’ at the Rebs.  Some say he was the fust man of us that enlisted; I know he fretted till we were off, an’ when we pitched into old Wagner, he fought like the Devil.”

“Were you with him when he was wounded?  How was it?”

“Yes, Ma’am.  There was somethin’ queer about it; for he ’peared to know the chap that killed him, an’ the chap knew him.  I don’t dare to ask, but I rather guess one owned the other some time,—­for, when they clinched, the chap sung out, ‘Bob!’ an’ Dane, ’Marster Ned!’—­then they went at it.”

I sat down suddenly, for the old anger and compassion struggled in my heart, and I both longed and feared to hear what was to follow.

“You see, when the Colonel—­Lord keep an’ send him back to us!—­it a’n’t certain yet, you know, Ma’am, though it’s two days ago we lost him—­well, when the Colonel shouted, ‘Rush on, boys, rush on!’ Dane tore away as if he was goin’ to take the fort alone; I was next him, an’ kept close as we went through the ditch an’ up the wall.  Hi! warn’t that a rusher!” and the boy flung up his well arm with a whoop, as if the mere memory of that stirring moment came over him in a gust of irrepressible excitement.