His cousin, soothed and hushed in his desire to talk, soon dropped into quiet slumber, while Martine’s thronging thoughts banished the sense of drowsiness.  A shaded lamp burned near, making a circle of light and leaving the rest of the ward dim and shadowy.  The scene was very familiar, and it was an easy effort for his imagination to place in the adjoining cots the patients with whom, months before, he had fought the winning or losing battle of life.  While memory sometimes went back compassionately to those sufferers, his thoughts dwelt chiefly upon the near future, with its certainty of happiness—­a happiness doubly appreciated because his renewed experience in the old conditions of his life made the home which awaited him all the sweeter from contrast.  He could scarcely believe that he was the same man who in places like this had sought to forget the pain of bereavement and of denial of his dearest wish—­he who in the morning would telegraph Helen that the wedding need not even be postponed, or any change made in their plans.

The hours were passing almost unnoted, when a patient beyond the circle of light feebly called for water.  Almost mechanically Hobart rose to get it, when a man wearing carpet slippers and an old dressing-gown shuffled noiselessly into view.

“Captain Nichol!” gasped Martine, sinking back, faint and trembling, in his chair.

The man paid no attention, but passed through the circle of light to the patient, gave him a drink, and turned.  Martine stared with the paralysis of one looking upon an apparition.

When the figure was opposite to him, he again ejaculated hoarsely, “Captain Nichol!”

The form in slippers and gray ghostly dressing-gown turned sleepy eyes upon him without the slightest sign of recognition, passed on, and disappeared among the shadows near the wardmaster’s room.

A blending of relief and fearful doubt agitated Martine.  He knew he had been wide awake and in the possession of every faculty—­ that his imagination had been playing him no tricks.  He was not even thinking of Nichol at the time; yet the impression that he had looked upon and spoken to his old schoolmate, to Helen’s dead lover, had been as strong as it was instantaneous.  When the man had turned, there had been an unnatural expression, which in a measure dispelled the illusion.  After a moment of thought which scorched his brain, he rose and followed the man’s steps, and was in time to see him rolling himself in his blanket on the cot nearest the door.  From violent agitation, Martine unconsciously shook the figure outlined in the blanket roughly, as he asked, “What’s your name?”

“Yankee Blank, doggone yer!  Kyant you wake a feller ‘thout yankin’ ‘im out o’ baid?  What yer want?”

“Great God!” muttered Hobart, tottering back to his seat beside his sleeping cousin, “was there ever such a horrible, mocking suggestion of one man in another?  Yankee Blank—­what a name!  Southern accent and vernacular, yet Nichol’s voice!  Such similarity combined with such dissimilarity is like a nightmare.  Of course it’s not Nichol.  He was killed nearly two years ago.  I’d be more than human if I could wish him back now; but never in my life have I been so shocked and startled.  This apparition must account for itself in the morning.”