“Now, sir,” turning to the again speechless chevalier, “if you stay here any longer, I shall take you under arrest to head-quarters:  consequently, you’d better accept the advice of a disinterested friend, and make tracks, lively.”

By this time the scion of a latter-day chivalry seemed to comprehend the situation, seized his lines, wheeled about, and went off at a spanking trot over the “sacred soil,”—­Jim shouting after him, “I say, Mr. F.F.V. if you meet any ‘Lincoln vandals,’ just give them my respects, will you?” to which as the knight gave no answer, we are left in doubt to this day whether Given’s commission was ever executed.

“There! my mind’s relieved on that point,” announced Jim, wiping his face with one hand and shaking the other after the retreating dust.  “Mean old scoot!  I’ll teach him to insult one of our boys,—­’Lincoln vandals’ indeed!  I’d like to have whanged him!” with a final shake and a final explosion, cooling off as rapidly as he had heated, and continuing the interrupted conversation with recovered temper and sangfroid.

He was delighted at meeting Surrey, and Surrey was equally glad to see once more his old favorite, for Jim and he had been great friends when he was a little boy and had watched the big boy at work in his father’s foundry,—­a favoritism which, spite of years and changes, and wide distinctions of social position, had never altered nor cooled, and which showed itself now in many a pleasant shape and fashion so long as they were near together.

They aided and abetted one another in more ways than one.  Jim at Surrey’s request, and by a plan of his proposing, succeeded in getting Sam’s wife away from her home,—­not from any liking for the expedition, or interest in either of the “niggers,” as he stoutly asserted, but solely to please the Colonel.  If that, indeed, were his only purpose, he succeeded to a charm, for when Surrey saw the two reunited, safe from the awful clutch of slavery, supplied with ample means for the journey and the settlement thereafter, and on their way to a good Northern home, he was more than pleased,—­he was rejoiced, and said, “Thank God!” with all his heart, and reverently, as he watched them away.

Before the summer ended Jim was down with what he called “a scratch”; a pretty ugly wound, the surgeon thought it, and the Colonel remembered and looked after him with unflagging interest and zeal.  Many a book and paper, many a cooling drink and bit of fruit delicious to the parched throat and fevered lips, found their way to the little table by his side.  Surrey was never too busy by reason of his duties, or among his own sick and wounded men, to find time for a chat, or a scrap of reading, or to write a letter for the prostrate and helpless fellow, who suffered without complaining, as, indeed, they did all about him, only relieving himself now and then by a suppressed growl.