l,
showing how sore and painful it must have been, and making Helen shudder
as she touched it with her lips, and said:

"Poor, darling Mark! that's where the cruel ball entered; but where is
the other scar--the one made by the man who went to you in the fields,
and who also fired, they said. I have tried so hard to hate him for
firing at a fallen foe."

"Rather, pray for him, darling. Bless him as the savior of your
husband's life, the noble fellow but for whom I should not have been
here now, for he was a Unionist, as true to the old flag as Abraham
himself," Mark Ray replied; and then, as Helen looked wonderingly at
him, he laid her head in an easier position upon his shoulder, and told
her a story so strange in its details that but for the frequent
occurrence of similar incidents it would be pronounced wholly unreal and
false.

Of what he suffered in the Southern prisons he did not speak, either
then or ever after, but began with the day when, with a courage born of
desperation, he jumped from the moving train, and was shot down by the
guard. Partially stunned, he still, retained sense enough to know when
a tall form bent over him, and to hear the rough but kindly voice which
said:

"Play 'possum, Yank. Make b'lieve you're dead, and throw them hellhounds
off the scent."

This was the last he knew for many weeks, and when again he awoke to
consciousness he found himself on the upper floor of a dilapidated hut,
which stood in the center of a little wood, his bed a pile of straw,
over which was spread a clean patchwork quilt, while seated at his side,
and watching him intently, was the same man who had bent over him in the
field, and shouted to the rebels that he was dead.

"I shall never forget my sensations then," Mark said, "for, with the
exception of this present hour, when I hold you, my darling, in my arms,
and know the danger is over, I never experienced a moment of greater
happiness and rest than when, up in that squalid garret, where the
rafters, festooned with cobwebs and dust, could be touched by stretching
out my hand, and where the sunlight only found an entrance through an
aperture in the roof, which admitted the rain as well, I came back to
life again, the pain in my head all gone, and nothing left save a
delicious feeling of languor, which prompted me to lie quietly for
several minutes, examining my surroundings, and speculating upon the
chance which brought me there. That I was a prisoner I did