The prisoner gave it.
“All right,” replied the sentinel, who, of course, found the name in the list.
Somers was now outside of the camp, and discharged from his parole; but his difficulties had only just commenced, for a guard of eighty men was stretched around the tract of woods in which the prisoners were at work. He walked away from the stockade animated by a hope, though it was but a dim one, of breathing once more the air of freedom. Intent upon the object before him, he passed a group of emaciated forms, whose constitutions were strong enough to enable them to overcome the horrors of the hospital, in which they were still patients.
“Somers!” exclaimed one of them, rushing towards him.
The young officer turned, and in the tall, pale, attenuated person who addressed him, he recognized his friend De Banyan. He looked like a wreck, and there was little to remind him of the manly and noble form of the major, as he had known him five months before.
“De Banyan!” cried Somers, rushing into the arms of his friend, and weeping like a child with the joy he could not conceal.
It was a tender and a touching reunion, and even the rebel sentinels did not interpose to separate them.
“How came you here?” demanded De Banyan, when the first emotions of the happy meeting had subsided.
“I was captured at the time you were shot; but I have been at Andersonville till a week ago,” replied Somers.
“I have been in the hospital; that’s the reason I did not see you.”