courteous and pleasant, but very reserved.  He interfered with no one, obeyed orders promptly and without remark, and was always present for duty.  Scrupulously neat in dress, always as clean-shaved as an old-fashioned gentleman of the world, with manners and conversation that showed him to have belonged to a refined and polished circle, he was evidently out of place as a private soldier in a company of reckless and none-too-refined young Illinois troopers, but he never availed himself of any of the numerous opportunities offered to change his associations.  His elegant penmanship would have secured him an easy berth and better society at headquarters, but he declined to accept a detail.  He became an exciting mystery to a knot of us imaginative young cubs, who sorted up out of the reminiscential rag-bag of high colors and strong contrasts with which the sensational literature that we most affected had plentifully stored our minds, a half-dozen intensely emotional careers for him.  We spent much time in mentally trying these on, and discussing which fitted him best.  We were always expecting a denouement that would come like a lightning flash and reveal his whole mysterious past, showing him to have been the disinherited scion of some noble house, a man of high station, who was expiating some fearful crime; an accomplished villain eluding his pursuers—­in short, a Somebody who would be a fitting hero for Miss Braddon’s or Wilkie Collins’s literary purposes.  We never got but two clues of his past, and they were faint ones.  One day, he left lying near me a small copy of “Paradise Lost,” that he always carried with him.  Turning over its leaves I found all of Milton’s bitter invectives against women heavily underscored.  Another time, while on guard with him, he spent much of his time in writing some Latin verses in very elegant chirography upon the white painted boards of a fence along which his beat ran.  We pressed in all the available knowledge of Latin about camp, and found that the tenor of the verses was very uncomplimentary to that charming sex which does us the honor of being our mothers and sweethearts.  These evidences we accepted as sufficient demonstration that there was a woman at the bottom of the mystery, and made us more impatient for further developments.  These were never to come.  Bradford pined away an Belle Isle, and grew weaker, but no less reserved, each day.  At length, one bitter cold night ended it all.  He was found in the morning stone dead, with his iron-gray hair frozen fast to the ground, upon which he lay.  Our mystery had to remain unsolved.  There was nothing about his person to give any hint as to his past.

CHAPTER XIV.

Hoping for exchange—­an exposition of the doctrine of chances —­off for Andersonville—­uncertainty as to our destination—­arrival at Andersonville.