“You are not prepared to swear, though, that this seeming sleep might not have been feigned?”
“I am prepared to testify that it is most unlikely.”
“Yet that same night he did make his escape and deserted. That is true, is it not?”
The major bowed. “He had sought to escape before. That was symptomatic of his condition.”
“And since then he has not been recaptured, though 16 he was in your opinion too ill and deranged to have deceived you by feigning sleep?”
“Quite true.”
“Have you ever heard Grant threaten Captain Comyn’s life?”
“Never.”
“Whether he had made such threats to your knowledge or not, he did come from that hill county of the Kentucky mountains commonly called Bloody Brackton, did he not?”
“I believe so. His enlistment record will answer that.”