re was some likelihood of a
death by drowning, but each time instinct asserted herself, righted
matters, and on he went. She pulled him out at last, on the southern
bank, and he lay gasping among the tree roots, somewhat sobered by the
drenching, but still on the whole a courageous giant. He triumphed.
"Yah! I got across! Goo'--goo-'bye, ye darned fools squattin' on the
hillside!"

He left the Chickahominy and moved through the woods. He went quite at
random and with a peculiar gait, his eyes on the ground, looking for
another haversack. But just hereabouts there showed nothing of the kind;
it was a solemn wood of pines and cedars, not overtrampled as yet by
war. Steve shivered, found a small opening where the sun streamed in,
planted himself in the middle of the warmth, and presently toppled over
on the pine needles and went to sleep. He slept an hour or more, when he
was waked by a party of officers riding through the wood. They stopped.
Steve sat up and blinked. The foremost, a florid, side-whiskered,
magnificently soldierly personage, wearing a very fine grey uniform and
the stars of a major-general, addressed him. "What are you doing here,
thir? Thraggling?--Anther me!"

Steve saluted. "I ain't the straggling kind, sir. Any man that says I
straggle is a liar--exceptin' the colonel, and he's mistaken. I'm one of
Stonewall's men."

"Thtonewall! Ith Jackthon acwoss?"

"They're building a bridge. I don't know if they air across yet. I
swum."

"What did you thwim for? Where'th your jacket? What's your
wegiment?--'65th Virginia?'--Well, 65th Virginia, you appear to me a
detherter--"

Steve began to whine. "Gawd, general, I ain't no deserter. If you'll
jest have patience and listen, I kin explain--"

"Time'th lacking, thir. You get up behind one of my couriers, and if
Jackthon's crothed I'll return you to your colonel. Take him up,
O'Brien."

"General Magruder, sor, can't I make him trot before me face like any
other water-spaniel? He's wet and dhirty, sor."

"All wight, all wight, O'Brien. Come on, Gwiffith. Nine-Mile road and
Thavage Thation!"

The officers rode on. The courier regarded with disfavour the unlucky
Steve. "Forward march, dhirty, desartin', weak-kneed crayture that ye
be! Thrott!"

Beyond the pine wood the two came into an area which had been
overtrampled. Indescribably dreary under the hot sun looked the
smouldering heaps and mounds of foodstuffs, the wrecked wagons, the
abandoned picks a