When Irene beheld the body of Crazy Joe, her resolution, which had borne her up under so many trials, gave way. She swooned, and, when she recovered, her grief so touched Mr. Tompkins that he had a costly burial outfit prepared for the poor dead boy. Abner obtained leave of absence to attend the funeral, and, early in the morning, he entered the home of his childhood, where he had so often played with the helpless being, who now lay there cold and lifeless. Irene met him in the hall, her eyes red with weeping. "O, Abner," she cried, "it was such a cruel thing!" "Yes, dear Irene, it was cruel, but it was a mistake, we were powerless to prevent," replied Abner, thinking it was the suddenness of his death that affected her. "But, O, Abner, you do not understand me. I cannot tell you how strangely the death of this unfortunate being affects me. I loved Joe as we love those whose blood flows in our veins. I knew it all along, but never felt it so forcibly as now. 'Tis some great instinct, some higher power than human reason, that prompts me. Come, see how peaceful, how happy, how changed he looks." He went with Irene into the darkened room. Joe's body was dressed in dark clothes with spotless linen, the hair trimmed and brushed, the eyelids closed over the troubled eyes. A look of intelligence had dawned in death on the face for years expressionless. There was a striking beauty in the face, with its perfect curve, its delicate, clear-cut features, and it seemed that there might have been a brain of power behind that lofty brow, on which he perceived the same deep scar that he had seen on his head when a boy. Abner was astonished. He had never thought Joe handsome with the old, pitiful look on his face, and his astonishment deepened, when, for the first time, he observed a striking resemblance between that face and the face of the girl who bent over it. "It cannot be possible!" he thought. "Yet it might be; the birth of both was shrouded in mystery." He did not give his thoughts expression, but he turned with deepening compassion from the white face of the dead to the face scarcely less white of the girl beside him. CHAPTER XXII. DIGGS GETS OUT OF HIS SCRAPE AGAIN. Mr. Diggs' views, in the cold, dark prison, and through iron bars, of a soldier's life, were very gloomy. The first night of his incarceration, for hours, he tossed about unable to sleep. "I am a failure," he moaned, "a miserable failure. I went into the army, intending to rise to be a general, and only got to be a corporal; then taken prisoner, lost my office, retaken by my own company and treated coolly. No chance of promotion, only kicks, cuffs, and bumps all through this cruel world. Others have risen to higher positions. There's Abner and Oleah, both captains. They were never taken prisoner, ducked in a creek, or thrown into a thorn bush; why should I? and now I am to be tried by a court-martial as a deserter, and I know I shall be killed."