She was so depressed by the surgeon’s aspect that she paid little heed to the conversation of her two admirers and soon left the table.  Borden followed her, and when they were alone began sadly, “Miss Baron, perhaps I am going to ask of you far too much, but you have shown yourself to be an unusually brave girl as well as a kind-hearted one, Hanfield is an old friend of mine and perhaps I’ve done wrong to mislead him.  But I didn’t and couldn’t foresee what has happened, and I did hope to start him in genuine convalescence, feeling sure that if he got well he would give up the hope of going home as a matter of course.  So far from succeeding, a fatal disease has set in—­tetanus, lock-jaw.  He’s dying and doesn’t know it.  I can’t tell him.  I’ve made the truth doubly cruel, for I’ve raised false hopes.  He continually talks of home and his pleading eyes stab me.  You can soften the blow to him, soothe and sustain him in meeting what is sure to come.”

“Oh, is there no hope?”

“None at all.  He can’t live.  If you feel that the ordeal would be too painful—­I wouldn’t ask it if I hadn’t seen in you unexpected qualities.”

“Oh, I must help him bear it; yet how can I? how shall I?”

“Well, I guess your heart and sympathy will guide you.  I can’t.  I can only say you had better tell him the whole truth.  He ought to know it for his own and family’s sake now, while perfectly rational.  Soften the truth as you can, but you can’t injure him by telling it plainly, for he will die.  God knows, were it my case, the tidings wouldn’t seem so very terrible if told by a girl like you.”

“Oh, but the tidings are so terrible to speak, especially to such a man.  Think of his beautiful wife and daughter, of his never seeing them again.  Oh, it’s just awful,” and her face grew white at the prospect.

“Yes, Miss Baron, it is.  In the midst of all the blood and carnage of the war, every now and then a case comes up which makes even my calloused heart admit, ‘It’s just awful.’  I’m only seeking to make it less awful to my poor friend, and perhaps at too great cost to you.”

“Well, he on his side, and others on ours, didn’t count the cost; neither must I. I must not think about it or my heart will fail me.  I will go at once.”

“Come then, and God help you and him.”

A straw-bed had been made up in a large, airy box-stall where the captain could be by himself.  Uncle Lusthah was in attendance and he had just brought a bowl of milk.

Borden had left Miss Lou to enter alone.  The captain held out his hand and said cheerfully, “Well, it’s an ill wind that blows nowhere.  This one will blow me home all the sooner I trust, for it must be plainer now than ever that I need the home change which will put me on my feet again.  You needn’t look so serious.  I feel only a little more poorly than I did—­sore throat and a queer kind of stiffness in my jaws as if I had taken cold in them.”