Days passed. He couldn't tell how many, for he lay, long hours at a time, unconscious, the mental faculties mercifully dead while the wounded ligatures knit themselves anew. His right arm had been cut by a saber-stroke, and a pistol-ball had entered above the shoulder-blade. Prompt attention would have given him recovery in a few days, but the twenty-four hours in a cart and the cars made his condition, for a time, serious.
But now he is visibly stronger, and his nurse brings people into the room to see him. They look at him with wonder and admiration, while the good lady is all in a flutter of delight. He hears himself spoken of always as the "lieutenant," and hesitates to ask an explanation. The physician comes but seldom, the lady explaining that all the doctors in town are busy in the hospitals. The truth flashed upon him one morning, when his hostess came bursting in to say:
"The provost guard has come to take your name. I don't know it, for when you were brought here my son only heard you called lieutenant."
"My name is John Sprague"—Jack lifted himself to his elbow in excitement and disregard of everything—"and my regiment is the—ah!" He fell back, and the frightened dame hurried to him as she saw his changed look and deadly pallor.
"Oh, how careless of me; how unthinking! There, lie perfectly still. I will send the guard away and come back."
She was gone before he could recover his speech or enough coherence to say what was in his mind. She informed the orderly that the ailing man was John Sprague, a lieutenant in the First Virginia Volunteers, for that was the regiment the hospital guards had named, when, on the night of the arrival, the eager citizens swarmed at the station to take the wounded to their homes, the hospitals being sadly unready. Jack instantly suspected the situation, the conversation in the ambulance coming back to him now distinctly. What should he do? He was in honor bound to undeceive the kind-hearted and unwitting accomplice of the fraud practiced on herself as well as on him. She came in presently with an officer. Jack was not familiar with the rebel insignia, and could not discover his rank or service, but he expected to hear himself denounced as a spy or anything odious.
"Our surgeon has been sent to Manassas, and Dr. Van Ness is come to take care of you in his place," the matron said, as Jack stared silent and quavering at the new-comer. That gentleman examined the patient, shook his head dubiously and declared high fever at work, and ordered absolute quiet for at least twenty-four hours, when, if he could, he would return. "Continue the prescriptions you have now, Mrs. Raines. All he needs is quiet. The hospital steward will come to dress his wounds as usual."
Mrs. Raines came in with tea and toast in the evening, and as she spread the napkin on the bed she prattled cheerily.
"I'm so happy to-night. I've just received a letter from my son. He's at Manassas. He's been promoted to lieutenant from sergeant. It was read at the head of the regiment—for gallant service at the Henry House, where he captured part of a company of Yankees with a squad of cavalry. He's only twenty-two, and if he lives he may be a general—if those cowardly Yankees will only fight long enough. But I'm afraid they won't. The Whig says this morning that that beast Lincoln has to keep himself guarded by a regiment of negroes, as the Northern people want to kill him. I hope they won't, for if they did then they might put some one in his place that has some sense, and then the war would come to an end and we should be cheated in a settlement, for the Yankees are sharper than our big-hearted, generous men. No, sir, no; you mustn't talk. I've promised to keep you quiet, so lie still. I'll read The Whig to you."
She ran over the meager dispatches made up of hearsay and speculation—how the North had fallen into a rage with the Washington authorities; how Lincoln's life wasn't safe; how the Cabinet had all resigned; how the Democrats had arisen in Congress and in the State Legislatures and demanded negotiations with "President Davis"; how England was drawing up a treaty with the new Confederacy. Then she turned to the local page. She ran over a dozen paragraphs recounting the deeds of well-known Richmond heroes, but these made no impression upon the listener, until she read: