Not until nearly a half hour was gone, and Helen had begun to realize that the arm which held her so tightly was genuine flesh and blood, and not mere delusion, did she look up into the face, glowing with so much of happiness and love. Upon the forehead, and just beneath the hair, there was a savage scar, and the flesh about it was red and angry still, showing how sore and painful it must have been, and making Helen shudder as she touched it with her lips, and said,
“Poor, darling Mark! that’s where the cruel ball entered; but where is the other scar,—the one made by the man who went to you in the fields. I have tried so hard not to hate him for firing at a fallen foe.”
“Rather pray for him, darling. Bless him as the savior of your husband’s life, the noble fellow but for whom I should not have been here now, for he was a Unionist, as true to the old flag as Abraham himself,” Mark Ray replied; and then, as Helen looked wonderingly at him, he laid her head in an easier position upon his shoulder, and told her a story so strange in its details, that but for the frequent occurrence of similar incidents, it would be pronounced wholly unreal and false.
Of what he suffered in the Southern prisons he did not speak, either then or ever after, but began with the day when, with a courage born of desperation, he jumped from the moving train and was shot down by the guard. Partially stunned, he still retained sense enough to know when a tall form bent over him, and to hear the rough but kindly voice which said,
“Play ’possum, Yank. Make b’lieve you’re dead, and throw ’em off the scent.”
This was the last he knew for many weeks, and when again he woke to consciousness he found himself on the upper floor of a dilapidated hut, which stood in the centre of a little wood, his bed a pile of straw, over which was spread a clean patch-work quilt, while seated at his side, and watching him intently, was the same man who had bent over him in the field, and shouted to the rebels that he was dead.
“I shall never forget my sensations then,” Mark said, “for with the exception of this present hour, when I hold you in my arms, and know the danger is over, I never experienced a moment of greater happiness and rest than when, up in that squalid garret, I came back to life again, the pain in my head all gone, and nothing left save a delicious feeling of languor, which prompted me to lie quietly for several minutes, examining my surroundings, and speculating upon the chance which brought me there. That I was a prisoner I did not doubt, until the old man at my side said to me cheerily,
“Well, old chap, you’ve come through it like a major, though I was mighty dubus a spell about that pesky ball. But old Aunt Bab and me fished it out, and since then you’ve begun to mend.”
“‘Where am I? Who are you?’ I asked, and he replied, ‘Who be I? Why, I’m Jack Jennins, the rarinest, redhotedest secesh there is in these yer parts, so the Rebs thinks; but ’twixt you and me, boy, I’m the tallest kind of a Union,—got a piece of the old flag sowed inside of my boots, and every night before sleepin’ I prays the Lord to gin Abe the victory, and raise Cain generally in t’other camp, and forgive Jack Jennins for tellin’ so many lies, and makin’ b’lieve he’s one thing when you know and he knows he’s t’other. If I’ve spared one Union chap, I’ll bet I have a hundred, me and old Bab, a black woman who lives here and tends to the cases I fotch her, till we contrive to git ’em inter Tennessee, whar they hev to shift for themselves.’
“I could only press his hand in token of my gratitude while he went on to say, ‘Them was beans I fired at you that day, but they sarved every purpose, and them scalliwags on the train s’pose you were put underground weeks ago, if indeed you wasn’t left to rot in the sun, as heaps and heaps on ’em is. Nobody knows you are here but Bab and me, and nobody must know if you want to git off with a whole hide. I could git a hundred dollars by givin’ you up, but you don’t s’pose Jack Jennins is a gwine to do that ar infernal trick. No, sir,’ and he brought his brawny fist down upon his knee with a force which made me tremble, while I tried to express my thanks for his great kindness. He was a noble man, Helen, while Aunt Bab, the colored woman, who nursed me so tenderly, and whose black, bony hands I kissed at parting, was as true a woman as any with a fairer skin and more beautiful exterior.