rmy enough. To-day, however, they were
on trivial matters.

"I've brought the General's order for your release at last, John. It
confines you to this district, however."

Lamar shook his head.

"No parole for me! My stake outside is too heavy for me to remain a
prisoner on anything but compulsion. I mean to escape, if I can. Floy
has nobody but me, you know, Charley."

There was a moment's silence.

"I wish," said Dorr, half to himself, "the child was with her cousin
Ruth. If she could make her a woman like herself!"

"You are kind," Lamar forced out, thinking of what might have been a
year ago.

Dorr had forgotten. He had just kissed little Ruth at the door-step,
coming away: thinking, as he walked up to camp, how her clear thought,
narrow as it was, was making his own higher, more just; wondering if
the tears on her face last night, when she got up from her knees after
prayer, might not help as much in the great cause of truth as the life
he was ready to give. He was so used to his little wife now, that he
could look to no hour of his past life, nor of the future coming ages
of event and work, where she was not present,--very flesh of his flesh,
heart of his heart. A gulf lay between them and the rest of the world.
It was hardly probable he could see her as a woman towards whom another
man looked across the gulf, dumb, hopeless, defrauded of his right.

"She sent you some flowers, by the way, John,--the last in the
yard,--and bade me be sure and bring you down with me. Your own colors,
you see?--to put you in mind of home,"--pointing to the crimson asters
flaked with snow.

The man smiled faintly: the smell of the flowers choked him: he laid
them aside. God knows he was trying to wring out this bitter old
thought: he could not look in Dorr's frank eyes while it was there.
He must escape to-night: he never would come near them again, in this
world, or beyond death,--never! He thought of that like a man going to
drag through eternity with half his soul gone. Very well: there was man
enough left in him to work honestly and bravely, and to thank God for
that good pure love he yet had. He turned to Dorr with a flushed face,
and began talking of Floy in hearty earnest,--glancing at Ben coming up
the hill, thinking that escape depended on him.

"I ordered your man up," said Captain Dorr. "Some canting Abolitionist
had him open-mouthed down there."

The negro came in, and stood in the corner, listening while the