“I will keep up as well as I can; but when a strong man, like me, sinks, he generally goes all at once. Leave me, I beg of you, Somers. It is the last favor I have to ask of you.”
“I would not if you begged it on your bended knee. I must leave you for a time, but you shall be saved, if God will permit.”
“God bless you, Somers,” faintly ejaculated the sufferer.
Somers left him, and hastened back to the road, carefully noticing the path, so that he could easily find the spot again. When he reached it, he was almost overcome by his emotions, and by his own exhaustion. He wanted strength, at that trying moment, more than ever before in his life—strength to save himself and his friend. He knelt down upon the cold ground, and prayed for strength with an earnestness which had never before burned in his soul. He trusted in God, and he asked for guidance in this most trying experience of his life.
He rose from his knees. He knew that the good Father had heard him—was with him. Strength came, if not to his muscles, in the increased earnestness of his purpose. He walked along the road till he came to the house, which the cornfields he had seen assured him could not be far distant. It was the mansion of a large plantation, and beyond it was its village of negro huts. The blacks were friendly, but he could hardly expect to find among them what he required to restore the waning life of De Banyan.
Somers was a desperate man. It seemed to him then that the rebels had no rights which he was bound to respect. Throwing off his dilapidated boots, he approached the house, and went to one of the windows. To his surprise he found it partly open. With all necessary care he raised the sash, and got into the house. There was just light enough in the room to enable him to find his way to the mantel, on which were a lamp and matches. He lighted the lamp and looked about him. There was a bed in the room, on which lay an object which would have frozen the blood in the veins of a timid person.
It was a corpse, the eyes covered with cents, enclosed in paper, and the jaw tied up with a handkerchief. Somers glanced at it: he was startled, but not appalled; for death, in its most horrid forms, was so familiar to him that he did not shrink from the sight. He had a mission to perform, and he proceeded to search the room for what he wanted. In a large closet he found two full suits of men’s clothing, one of them a rebel uniform; and he concluded that the deceased had been an officer in the army. On a table, with a number of vials, he found a bottle of brandy, of which he drank a few swallows himself.
Dropping the clothing out of the window, where he could take it at his leisure, he continued the search, and found a couple of revolvers in a drawer, with caps and cartridges, which he appropriated. He then left the room, and in the hall found an overcoat; but the most needed articles were bacon and bread, of which he discovered a plentiful supply in another room. Filling a basket with the food, he hastened to make his escape.
“Is that you, Alfred?” said the voice of a woman on the second floor.
“Yes,” replied Somers.