A band was playing joyously, and the man in the next cot, who was being lifted to a stretcher, said, “There’s the Governor and his staff; that’s him in the high hat.”  It was really very well done.  The Custom-House and the Elevated Railroad and Castle Garden were as like to life as a photograph, and the crowd was as well handled as a mob in a play.  His heart ached for it so that he could not bear the pain, and he turned his back on it.  It was cruel to keep it up so long.  His keeper lifted him in his arms, and pulled him into a dirty uniform which had belonged, apparently, to a much larger man—­a man who had been killed probably, for there were dark brown marks of blood on the tunic and breeches.  When he tried to stand on his feet, Castle Garden and the Battery disappeared in a black cloud of night, just as he knew they would; but when he opened his eyes from the stretcher, they had returned again.  It was a most remarkably vivid vision.  They kept it up so well.  Now the young Doctor and the hospital steward were pretending to carry him down a gangplank and into an open space; and he saw quite close to him a long line policemen, and behind them thousands of faces, some of them women’s faces—­women who pointed at him and then shook their heads and cried, and pressed their hands to their cheeks, still looking at him.  He wondered why they cried.  He did not know them, nor did they know him.  No one knew him; these people were only ghosts.

There was a quick parting in the crowd.  A man he had once known shoved two of the policemen to one side, and he heard a girl’s voice speaking his name, like a sob; and She came running out across the open space and fell on her knees beside the stretcher, and bent down over him, and he was clasped in two young, firm arms.

“Of course it is not real, of course it is not She,” he assured himself.  “Because She would not do such a thing.  Before all these people She would not do it.”

But he trembled and his heart throbbed so cruelly that he could not bear the pain.

She was pretending to cry.

“They wired us you had started for Tampa on the hospital ship,” She was saying, “and Aunt and I went all the way there before we heard you had been sent North.  We have been on the cars a week.  That is why I missed you.  Do you understand?  It was not my fault.  I tried to come.  Indeed, I tried to come.”

She turned her head and looked up fearfully at the young Doctor.

“Tell me, why does he look at me like that?” she asked.  “He doesn’t know me.  Is he very ill?  Tell me the truth.”  She drew in her breath quickly.  “Of course you will tell me the truth.”

When she asked the question he felt her arms draw tight about his shoulders.  It was as though she was holding him to herself, and from some one who had reached out for him.  In his trouble he turned to his old friend and keeper.  His voice was hoarse and very low.

“Is this the same young lady who was on the transport—­the one you used to drive away?”