“No, sir.”

“Call Captain Vaughan, Brice, and ask him to conduct the prisoner back.”

“May I speak to him, General?” I asked.  The General nodded.

I asked him if I could write home for him or do anything else.  That seemed to touch him.  Some day I shall tell you what he said.

Then Vaughan took him out, and I heard the guard shoulder arms and tramp away in the night.  The General and I were left alone with the mahogany table between us, and a family portrait of somebody looking down on us from the shadow on the wall.  A moist spring air came in at the open windows, and the candles flickered.  After a silence, I ventured to say: 

“I hope he won’t be shot, General.”

“Don’t know, Brice,” he answered.  “Can’t tell now.  Hate to shoot him, but war is war.  Magnificent class he belongs to—­pity we should have to fight those fellows.”

He paused, and drummed on the table.  “Brice,” said he, “I’m going to send you to General Grant at City Point with despatches.  I’m sorry Dunn went back yesterday, but it can’t be helped.  Can you start in half an hour?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’ll have to ride to Kinston.  The railroad won’t be through until to-morrow:  I’ll telegraph there, and to General Easton at Morehead City.  He’ll have a boat for you.  Tell Grant I expect to run up there in a day or two myself, when things are arranged here.  You may wait until I come.”

“Yes, sir.”

I turned to go, but Clarence Colfax was on my mind “General?”

“Eh! what?”

“General, could you hold Colonel Colfax until I see you again?”

It was a bold thing to say, and I quaked.  And he looked at me in his keen way, through and through “You saved his life once before, didn’t you?”

“You allowed me to have him sent home from Vicksburg, sir.”

He answered with one of his jokes—­apropos of something he said on the Court House steps at Vicksburg.  Perhaps I shall tell it to you sometime.

“Well, well,” he said, “I’ll see, I’ll see.  Thank God this war is pretty near over.  I’ll let you know, Brice, before I shoot him.”

I rode the thirty odd miles to Kinston in—­little more than three hours.  A locomotive was waiting for me, and I jumped into a cab with a friendly engineer.  Soon we were roaring seaward through the vast pine forests.  It was a lonely journey, and you were much in my mind.  My greatest apprehension was that we might be derailed and the despatches captured; for as fast as our army had advanced, the track of it had closed again, like the wake of a ship at sea.  Guerillas were roving about, tearing up ties and destroying bridges.

There was one five-minute interval of excitement when, far down the tunnel through the forest, we saw a light gleaming.  The engineer said there was no house there, that it must be a fire.  But we did not slacken our speed, and gradually the leaping flames grew larger and redder until we were upon them.