"You'll want it down there, as much as you can git. I have no need of
it. It a'n't mine. It's his'n."
The Sergeant had evidently taken it in trust.
"What claim have I to it?" I asked.
"Any poor fellow's got a claim to it. It's meant to help poor fellows,
that money is. It's a dead man's work."
I was more than ever touched now, in the presence of the wealth of this
mine which I had tapped.
"I will take some of it, Sergeant," I replied; "and I shall do my best
to use it as well as you have."
(This incident, strange to say, in its display of human purity, almost
tempted me to abandon my scheme of escape, and to go with the Sergeant
down to Richmond. But he was no measure of his fellows.)
After that we chatted easily off and on, and had a feeling of confidence
in each other which a two or three days' march could not alone have
created.
At about half after six that night, (I had made the Sergeant take my
watch, which otherwise I should surely be robbed of, I told him; and he
gave me the time,)--at about half after six, two officers came riding
furiously up to our mild officer and kept along with him for awhile,
making three dim figures above our heads (they only were mounted) in the
forest shades, in place of the one that, unlike the erl-king, had
continued on his way harmlessly from our outset. Their consultation
over, the two strangers dashed over snapping weeds and underbrush to the
command on ahead, and our mild officer ordered our column (of prisoners)
to halt. We were in the woods still, but we had emerged from between
those sun-spanned embankments some time since. The ground was ill chosen
by our gentle ruler, but he may have depended much upon his men, whose
vigilance, no doubt, he had before tried in the fall of day. They seemed
to me but a handful, and only a sieve for their charge to dribble
through, the latter aided by the time and place in their work of
dropping off. I drew closer to the Adjutant.
"Say what you have to say for home, in case we miss," I said,--and in
the confusion of the halt I could talk rather freely. "Your time has
come now."
"You will write, if I'm not heard from,--and--my love to my"--he
gurgled.
"Yes, yes," I said, cheerily. "All right, old fellow,--we'll both laugh
over this, some day."