Slips of paper, with "exchange," "death," and "imprisonment" written on them in the numbers needed, were made ready, rolled up, and tossed into an empty canteen; each man was required to come forward and draw, I alone excepted because I was an officer of the British Army. I remember passionately arguing that they had no right to exempt me, since I had been in the fray, and had killed three men on my own hook, and would have killed thirty more had I had the chance; but I was perhaps incoherent in the fever that was fast seizing all my limbs from the rack of undressed wounds; at any rate, the Northerners took no heed, save to force me into silence, and the drawing began. As long as I live I shall see that night in remembrance with hideous distinctness: the low blackened shed with its foetid odors from the cattle lately foddered there; the yellow light flaring dully here and there; the glisten of the cruel rifles; the heaps of straw and hay soaked with clotted blood; the group of Union Officers standing near the doorway; and the war-worn indomitable faces of the Southerners, with the fairer head and slighter form of their English chief standing out slightly in front of all. The Conscription of Death commenced; a Federal private took the paper from each man as he drew it, and read the word of destiny aloud. Not one amongst them faltered or paused one moment; each went,--even those most exhausted, most in agony,--with a calm and steady step, as they would have marched up to take the Flag of the Stars and Bars from Lee or Longstreet. Not one waited a second's breath before he plunged his hand into the fatal lottery. Deadly Dash was the first called: there was not one shadow of anxiety upon his face; it was calm without effort, careless without bravado, simply, entirely indifferent. They took his paper and read the words of safety and of life--"Exchange." Then, for one instant, a glory of hope flashed like the sun into his eyes--to die the next; die utterly. Three followed him, and they all drew the fiat for detention; the fifth called was Stuart Lane. Let him have suffered as he would, he gave no sign of it now; he approached with his firm, bold cavalry step, and his head haughtily lifted; the proud, fiery, dauntless Cavalier of ideal and of romance. Without a tremor in his wrist he drew his paper out and gave it. One word alone fell distinct on the silence like the hiss of a shot through the night--"_Death!_" He bowed his head slightly as if in assent, and stepped backward--still without a sign. His English chief gave him one look,--it was that of merciless exultation, of brutal joy, of dark, Cain-like, murderous hate; but it passed, passed quickly: Dash's head sank on his chest, and on his face there was the shadow, I think, of a terrible struggle--the shadow, I know, of a great remorse. He strove with his longing greed for this man's destruction; he knew that he thirsted _to see him die_.