"I dreamed he was dead. I dream it every night." "But, my child, that does not make it so. Would you like to get into bed here with me? No?--or to go back now to your own bed? No? What, then?" "I do not want to go back to bed any more. I want to go and find 'Thanase." "Why, my child, you are not thoroughly awake, are you?" "Yes, I want to go and find 'Thanase. I have been thinking to-night of all you have told me--of all you said that day in the garden,--and--I want to go and find 'Thanase." "My boy," said the priest, drawing the lad with gentle force to his bosom, "my little old man, does this mean that you have come to the end of all self-service?--that self is never going to be spelt with a capital S any more? Will it be that way if I let you go?" "Yes." "Well, then, my son--God only knows whether I am wise or foolish, but--you may go." The boy smiled for the first time in weeks, then climbed half upon the bed, buried his face in the priest's bosom, and sobbed as though his heart had broken. "It has broken," said the cure to himself as he clasped him tightly. "It has broken--thank God!" CHAPTER VII. A NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK. In such and such a battle, in the last charge across a certain cornfield, or in the hurried falling back through a certain wood, with the murderous lead singing and hitting from yonder dark mass descending on the flank, and the air full of imperious calls, "Halt!"--"Surrender!" a man disappeared. He was not with those who escaped, nor with the dead when they were buried, nor among the wounded anywhere, nor in any group of prisoners. But long after the war was over, another man, swinging a bush scythe among the overgrown corners of a worm fence, found the poor remnant of him, put it scarcely underground, and that was the end. How many times that happened! Was it so with 'Thanase? No. For Sosthene's sake the ex-governor had taken much pains to correspond with officials concerning the missing youth, and had secured some slender re-assurances. 'Thanase, though captured, had not been taken to prison. Tidings of general surrender had overhauled him on the way to it, near, I think, the city of Baltimore--somewhere in that region, at any rate; and he had been paroled and liberated, and had started penniless and on foot, south-westward along the railway-tracks.