“I was sure you would come,” answered the man; “the safe-conduct—”
“I tore that up the moment I received it,” answered Kilgariff.
“But why? It was valid.”
“For any other officer in our army, yes,” answered Kilgariff; “but not for me, as you very well know. Anyhow, I preferred to come under the safe-conduct of Southern carbines and cannon and sabres. Never mind that. Go on. What do you want?”
The man winced and groaned with pain as he turned himself a little on his cot in order to face his interlocutor. Presently he said:—
“I’m shot through the groin with a canister ball. It is a wound unto death, I suppose.”
“Yes? Well? What else? I did not come to ask after your health.”
“Of course not. I mention my condition only as a man who flings a card upon the table at a critical moment exclaims, ‘That’s a trump.’ You see, the things I want to say to you are in the nature of an ante-mortem statement, and I want you to understand that, so that you may believe all I have to tell you.”
“I understand,” said Kilgariff. “You are precisely the sort of man, who, after lying and cheating all his life, would tell the truth in a dying statement, if only by way of cheating the Day of Judgment and playing stacked cards on the Almighty. Go on.”