"The ship is doomed!" he cried suddenly. "We are going to pieces on the rocks!" And then he began to speak of the army and of the terrible battle through which he had gone.
"What can he mean by saying the ship is doomed?" was the question which Mrs. Ruthven asked herself. "Can it be that he was once in a shipwreck?"
For a long while after this the colonel lay silent. Then he opened his eyes and stared around wildly.
"All drowned, you say?" he exclaimed. "No! no! Laura must be saved! Save my wife—never mind me! How high the waves are running! Where is the child? Captain, why don't you put out to sea? Don't you see the rebels? They are luring us to the coast! See, that rebel is stealing my child, my darling Jack! Ha! we have struck, and I am drifting. Laura, where are you? Save Jack! Look, look, they are retreating! The battle is won! Oh, what a storm—can nothing be saved?" And then the poor man sank back, completely exhausted.
Mrs. Ruthven drank in the spoken words like one in a dream. What was this the wounded officer was saying? Something about a storm, about a wife Laura, and a child named Jack!
"Can it be possible that he is speaking of our boy Jack?" she asked herself, and then looked at the colonel's face more closely than ever. The resemblance was more than striking, it was perfect. Give Jack that heavy mustache and those wrinkles, and the faces would be exactly alike.
"He must be Jack's father!" she went on. "How wonderful! But what does this mean? Why did he not claim Jack long ago?"
For over an hour she sat by the colonel's side, but he made no further efforts to speak. In the meantime a surgeon came in to attend to the officer's wound.
"If you can have him taken to my house, I will see to it that he has the best of care," said Mrs. Ruthven.
"Why, are you not a Southern woman, madam?" questioned the surgeon, in pardonable surprise.