"My fallen hero finds himself next—not in Heaven, where, by gar, his brave deeds have doubtless bought for him a seat in the dress-circle—but in a villainous ambulance, being jolted over an execrable wood-road in a rain-storm which kindly drenches him with sufficient moisture to keep his wounds flowing. Having ascertained as much, and doubtless feeling disgusted with the lack of courtesy which the jade Fortune has displayed, he absents his spirit once more from his body, going an experimental tour to his future quarters, and leaving that tenement to all appearances 'to let.'
"It is barely possible that his future quarters are not inviting, for the spirit comes back from a blind boxing for a place somewhere, and takes up with the poor, shattered body once more, and St. Udo wakes up to find himself a prisoner of the South, immured in Castle Thunder, Richmond.
"Mademoiselle, I have already narrated to you the trials which I, the foot-ball of the vixen Fortune, endured in Castle Thunder with my camarade. I pass the time of his deadly illness, when the breath flits forth like a puff, and seems gone forever—when the great wounds fever, and my friend in blue babbles at the charge, and the rally, and shouts of phantom soldiers, or turns to his pillow and whispers of woman's tender hands, when there are but the rough fingers of his faithful Ludovic. Ma foi! but he is a British Napoleon! He triumphs over his desperate wounds, and stifling captivity, and one day my Brand sits up and knows me, whom last he had known as a foe, by the ungraceful contretemps of war.
"Mon Dieu! but I was glad, and I was sorry! There he is for you—so thin, and so patient—waiting to accept the life that God shall give.
"My heroine, you shall not weep. It is better than the death by treachery, is it not? And Voila! he shall give you an English hand-grip yet—shall he not? And I shall be there to see and to bless, and to be the good sorcier. Ah, bravo! or what you call in England, 'Here, here!' we shall all be happy presently.
"But to resume: When I know better this man whom I have yet known as the brave soldier at the head of his company, when I see him in captivity, in trial, in sickness, eating with me the crust, drinking with me the muddy water, bearing cowardly usage from his jailers—all with that grand patience, I find in him a great man, and morally I see myself upon my knees before him to do honor and I whisper in my own ear, 'Ludovic Calembours, tell this, the only man whom you ever loved better than yourself the plot which was made by this wretch, Mortlake, to oust him from his Castle Brand!'
"And I tell him the whole story, by gar! I spare not myself at all, though he scorns me with his hand, and calls me 'blackleg,' and thanks me nothing for my story, but after that he is kinder to me, and rouses himself to scoop with me through our prison floor, with the broken plate—I with the rusty key, and when we stand face to face under the stars beyond the prison bars, his hand so thin, so bleeding, is pointed Northward, his sunken eyes gather fire, and he says:
"'My fortune is on the Federal battle-field; such life as God sends me I shall seek there; I am done forever with England.'
"Mon Dieu! I love my brave St. Udo like a brother. Would I let my brother drop Seven-Oak Waaste through his fingers?
"I say him neither yea nor nay, but traverse with him the dreary swamps, and we go to Washington.