"Let me assist you to bandage your head, and then we will retire to the rear." He bound Abner's handkerchief about his head, assisted him to rise, and offered him his arm.
"No, I thank you," said Abner, "I can walk alone; I am only a little stunned."
"I shall be compelled to take your sword, colonel," said the lieutenant.
"I am glad," said Abner, handing it to him, "that if I must surrender, it is to a gentleman."
Abner was conveyed to the rear of the Confederate army. During that day and part of the next the battle raged, but Hooker was finally compelled to fall back, with a loss of eleven thousand men; the enemy, however, suffered an irreparable loss in the death of Stonewall Jackson, who was mortally wounded and died in a few days after. The affair was kept secret in the rebel army as long as possible, and there is yet a difference of opinion as to how he met his death, some asserting that he was accidentally shot by his own pickets, others that he was killed by sharpshooters, while reconnoitering, and still others claim that he was assassinated.
The fourth day after the battle, several hundred prisoners, Abner among them, were brought before the provost-marshal, their names demanded and placed on a large roll. As Abner was standing in the ranks he observed a Confederate officer near him. There was something familiar about his figure, and Abner, looking up quickly, recognized his brother. A swift impulse swept over him, a longing to speak to him, to hear his voice, to break down—to sweep away, with passionate appeal, this monstrous barrier. But he smothered the impulse; his brother might think him imploring clemency at his hands, and that he would never do.
Oleah's look was only the indifferent glance of a stranger, and he passed on and made no sign.
It was no jealous rivalry that held these brothers apart. Abner felt no bitterness that his brother had won the gentle Irene's love; his feeling for her had not been the one overpowering love of a lifetime, and now he looked after Oleah with the brotherly affection, so long suppressed, welling anew in his heart, and deplored their hopeless estrangement, little dreaming that Irene had come to blame herself as the cause. But Irene was wrong; it was a deeper and deadly passion than love of her that had worked this evil miracle—a passion which had been roused in one son by the father's words, in the other by the mother's, which had grown in intensity, stirring up their very souls within them, and at last overcoming all other feelings.
Colonel Tompkins' name was enrolled on the prison list, and he was marched away with the other prisoners.