Lee acknowledged the gunner’s salute. “You have been known as Philip Deaderick, gunner in ——’s battery?” “Yes, sir.” “But you are Richard Cleave, colonel of the Sixty-fifth?” “I am Richard Cleave, sir. I was colonel of the Sixty-fifth.” Lee moved his head. The tent was filled with shadows. A negro servant, bringing a lamp, set it on the table. In at the tent flap came the multitudinous hushed sound of the gathering night. “Major Stafford!” said Lee. Stafford came out of the dusk and stood before the table. There were five feet of earth between him and Cleave. The latter drew a quickened breath and held high his head. “When,” asked Lee, watching him, “when did you last see the officer whom I have just called?” “Sir, I saw him at Chantilly, in the dusk and the rain—” “You knew that he was taken at Sharpsburg?” “Yes.” “He has been in prison ever since—until the other day when he broke prison. He has been, I think, in another and worse prison—the prison of untruth. Now he breaks that prison, too.—Major Stafford, you will repeat to Colonel Cleave what you have written in these letters”—he touched them where they lay upon the table—“and what you have to-day told to me.” Stafford’s controlled, slow speech ceased its vibration in the tent. It had lasted several minutes, and it had been addressed to a man who, after the first few words, stood with lowered eyes. It was a detailed explanation of what had occurred at White Oak Swamp in ’62, and it was given with a certain determined calm, with literalness, and with an absence of any beating of the breast. When it was ended there was a defined pause, then through the tent, from the great general at the table to the aide standing by the door, there ran a sound like a sigh. The man most deeply concerned stood straight and quiet. He stood as though lost in a brown study, like one who has attention only for the inward procession of events. Lee spoke. “As quickly as possible there shall be a public reversal of the first decision.” He paused, then rested his grave eyes upon Stafford. “As for you,” he said, “you will consider yourself under arrest, pending the judgment of the court which I shall appoint. You have done a great wrong. It is well that at last, with your own eyes, you see it for what it is.” He withdrew his gaze, rose, and going over to Cleave, took his hand. “You have gone through bitter waters,” he said. “Well, it is over! and we welcome back among us a brave man and a gallant gentleman! Forget the past in thought for the future! The Sixty-fifth Virginia is yours again, Colonel Cleave. Indeed, I think that after yesterday we could not get it to belong to any one else!” “Colonel Erskine, sir,—” From the shadow hard-by came Fauquier Cary’s moved voice. “Erskine would have rejoiced with the rest of us, Richard. He never believed—”