Rosa did not recognize the civilian at first, but as he turned to accompany the soldier she remembered where she had seen him before. He was the prisoner Jack had spoken with in Richmond the day the party visited the tobacco warehouse. She hastened her step, and, as she came up with the men, she said, tremulously:
"I am Major Atterbury's sister. My brother is unconscious. Can I attend to the business you have with him?"
Jones turned and stopped, glancing in surprise at the girl.
"I'm sorry to learn that your brother's so low. But you can do all that I hoped from him. Here is a letter addressed to John Sprague. It was received at his regiment three days ago. I happened to be there making inquiries for him, and the colonel handed it to me. Under the circumstances I felt justified in reading it, and it turns out that I did well."
"John Sprague is missing?" Rosa cried, her mind instantly at work in alarm for some one else.
Jones, dismissing the orderly, told her the facts as we have already followed them. Leaving out all mention of Kate, he told her how he had hurried down to Newport News, and thence to the outposts on the Warrick.
There he had learned that Jack and Dick had been wounded, fatally the story went, in the final volley fired by the pursuers. They had been carried to the hospital at Hampton. But there all trace had been lost. The steward who received them and the surgeon who had taken their descriptive list had been transferred to St. Louis. There was, however, no record of their deaths, and upon that he based the hope that they were either in hospital, or had been, through some strange confusion, assigned among rebel wounded, a thing that had frequently happened in the hurry of transporting large numbers of wounded men.
"And does Mrs. Sprague know all this?" Rosa cried, understanding now why
Vincent's letter and her own had not brought a response.
"Partly, I think. Mrs. Sprague and her daughter are in Washington, in the state of mind you may imagine, and exhausting bales of red tape to reach the lost boys."
Poor Rosa! She had thought her grief and terror too much to endure before. Now how trivial Vincent's fever in comparison with this appalling disappearance of Dick and Jack! She walked on over the sparse herbage, over her shoes in the soft sand, when Linda came running from the tent in joyous excitement.