Two candles were burning in pewter sticks on the bare mahogany table.  There was the General sitting beside them, with his legs crossed, holding some crumpled tissue paper very near his eyes, and reading.  He did not look up when I entered.  I was aware of a man standing, tall and straight, just out of range of the candles’ rays.  He wore the easy dress of a Southern planter, with the broad felt hat.  The head was flung back so that there was just a patch of light on the chin, and the lids of the eyes in the shadow were half closed.

My sensations are worth noting.  For the moment I felt precisely as I had when I was hit by that bullet in Lauman’s charge.  I was aware of something very like pain, yet I could not place the cause of it.  But this is what since has made me feel queer:  you doubtless remember staying at Hollingdean, when I was a boy, and hearing the story of Lord Northwell’s daredevil Royalist ancestor,—­the one with the lace collar over the dull-gold velvet, and the pointed chin, and the lazy scorn in the eyes.  Those eyes are painted with drooping lids.  The first time I saw Clarence Colfax I thought of that picture—­and now I thought of the picture first.

The General’s voice startled me.

“Major Brice, do you know this gentleman?” he asked.

“Yes, General.”

“Who is he?”

“His name is Colfax, sir—­Colonel Colfax, I think”

“Thought so,” said the General.

I have thought much of that scene since, as I am steaming northward over green seas and under cloudless skies, and it has seemed very unreal.  I should almost say supernatural when I reflect how I have run across this man again and again, and always opposing him.  I can recall just how he looked at the slave auction, which seem, so long ago:  very handsome, very boyish, and yet with the air of one to be deferred to.  It was sufficiently remarkable that I should have found him in Vicksburg.  But now—­to be brought face to face with him in this old dining room in Goldsboro!  And he a prisoner.  He had not moved.  I did not know how he would act, but I went up to him and held out my hand, and said.—­“How do you do, Colonel Colfax?”

I am sure that my voice was not very steady, for I cannot help liking him And then his face lighted up and he gave me his hand.  And he smiled at me and again at the General, as much as to say that it was all over.  He has a wonderful smile.

“We seem to run into each other, Major Brice,” said he.

The pluck of the man was superb.  I could see that the General, too, was moved, from the way he looked at him.  And he speaks a little more abruptly at such times.

“Guess that settles it, Colonel,” he said.

“I reckon it does, General,” said Clarence, still smiling.  The General turned from him to the table with a kind of jerk and clapped his hand on the tissue paper.

“These speak for themselves, sir,” he said.  “It is very plain that they would have reached the prominent citizens for whom they were intended if you had succeeded in your enterprise.  You were captured out of uniform You know enough of war to appreciate the risk you ran.  Any statement to make?”