The captain did as he was bidden, but soon shook his head. "Hit's right purty, but I don't reckerlect."
"Well, sit down here, then, and look at that picture. Who is it?"
"Why, hit's me—me dressed up as cap'n," ejaculated Nichol, delightedly.
"Yes, that was the way you looked and dressed before you were wounded."
"How yer talk! This beats anythin' I ever yeared from the Johnnies."
"Now, Captain Nichol, you see we are not deceiving you. We called you captain. There's your likeness, taken before you were hurt and lost your memory, and you can see for yourself that you were a captain. You must think how much there is for you to try to remember. Before you went to the war, long before you got hurt, you gave this likeness of yourself to a young lady that you thought a great deal of. Can't you recall something about it?"
Nichol wrinkled his scarred forehead, scratched his head, and hitched uneasily in his chair, evidently making a vain effort to penetrate the gloom back of that vague awakening in the Southern hospital. At last he broke out in his usual irritation, "Naw, I kyant, doggon—"
"Hush! you must not use that word here. Don't be discouraged. You are trying; that's all I ask," and the doctor laid a soothing hand on his shoulder. "Now, Captain, I'll just step in the next room. You think quietly as you can about the young lady to whom you gave that picture of yourself."
Nichol was immensely pleased with his photograph, and looked at it in all its lights. While thus gratifying a sort of childish vanity, Helen entered noiselessly, her blue eyes, doubly luminous from the pallor of her face, shining like sapphires. So intent was her gaze that one might think it would "kindle a soul under the ribs of death."
At last Nichol became conscious of her presence and started, exclaiming, "Why, there she is herself."