facts as we have already
followed them. Leaving out all mention of Kate, he told her how he had
hurried down to Newport News, and thence to the outposts on the Warrick.

There he had learned that Jack and Dick had been wounded, fatally the
story went, in the final volley fired by the pursuers. They had been
carried to the hospital at Hampton. But there all trace had been lost.
The steward who received them and the surgeon who had taken their
descriptive list had been transferred to St. Louis. There was, however,
no record of their deaths, and upon that he based the hope that they
were either in hospital, or had been, through some strange confusion,
assigned among rebel wounded, a thing that had frequently happened in
the hurry of transporting large numbers of wounded men.

"And does Mrs. Sprague know all this?" Rosa cried, understanding now why
Vincent's letter and her own had not brought a response.

"Partly, I think. Mrs. Sprague and her daughter are in Washington, in
the state of mind you may imagine, and exhausting bales of red tape to
reach the lost boys."

Poor Rosa! She had thought her grief and terror too much to endure
before. Now how trivial Vincent's fever in comparison with this
appalling disappearance of Dick and Jack! She walked on over the sparse
herbage, over her shoes in the soft sand, when Linda came running from
the tent in joyous excitement.

"De good Lord, Miss Rosa, she's here; she's done come!"

"Who is here--who is come?" Rosa cried, impatiently; "not mamma?"

"'Deed no, Miss Rosa; Miss Limpy."

"What?"

"Yes, indeedy; and, oh, bress de Lord, Massa Vint knows her, and is
talkin' like a sweet dove!"

It was true. Miss "Limpy," blushing very red, was surprised by Rosa in a
very motherly attitude by the patient's cot. The two girls melted in a
delirious hug, mingled with spasmodic smacks of the lips and a soft,
gurgling _crescendo_ of exclamation, not very intelligible to Jones and
Linda, who discreetly remained near the door on the outside.

Vincent's eyes were fixed on Olympia. For the first time in ten days
they shone with the light of reason. He smiled softly at the scene and
murmured lightly to himself. Warned not to tax the feeble powers of the
invalid, Rosa and Jones withdrew, leaving Olympia to recover from the
fatigues of her journey in the tent with Vincent.

"Now, you're not to talk, you know," Olympia said, with matronly
decision, "I shall remain here to mesmerize you into