They walked very slowly, and as they came nearer he saw that they supported between them one of their comrades, who tottered like an old man.
"That fellow ought to be in an ambulance instead of on foot," he thought, and walked toward the group. As he reached them the man who was being supported raised his head.
"Herbert—my God, Herbert!" he cried, and clutched the yellow, skeleton-like hands.
The gaunt figure raised a haggard, ashen face, with hollow eyes and unshaven cheeks.
"Joe!" he whispered in a weak voice; "thank God!"
Joe had his arm about him by this time supporting him. Casting a swift glance up and down the street he saw a man coming toward them in a wagon.
"Here," he shouted, "take this soldier to a hotel, won't you? He's sick—wounded—he is not able to walk."
The war was too fresh in the minds of the people for any one to hesitate. Willing hands lifted the emaciated frame of the young soldier into the wagon, Joe sprang in beside him, and a few moments later Herbert James was in a hot bath, laid in a clean bed, with a doctor and nurse beside him.
When he could speak he told Joe that he had been captured and held in a Southern prison, where the conditions were so terrible that it was a miracle a single man came out of it alive. He had just been exchanged, he said, and he and the companions whom Joe had seen with him were on their way home when Joe met him.
Joe saw that there was something on his mind of which he hesitated to speak, and after a little time he asked for Ruth, so bashfully, and with an expression of such wistfulness in his hollow eyes that Joe's heart rejoiced. He told him that Ruth was well, but very unhappy at his failure to return, at which a faint color stained the boy's thin cheeks, and he turned his face to the wall and lay silent for many moments.