“Let us talk of the future,” he said, “not of the past. I am reorganising the medical staff for the approaching campaign. I am sorely put to it to find fit men for the more responsible places. My simple word will secure for you a commission as major-surgeon, and I will assign you to the very best post at my disposal. I need just such men as you are—a dozen, a score, yes, half a hundred of them. You must put yourself in my hands. I’ll apply for your commission to-day, and get it within three days at most.” “If you will think a moment, Arthur,” said the other, “you will see that I could not do that without dishonour. Branded as I am with a conviction of felony, I have no right to impose myself as a commissioned officer upon men who would never consent to associate with me upon such terms if they knew.” “I respect your scruple,” answered Doctor Brent, after a moment of reflection, “but I do not share it. In the first place, the disability you mention is your misfortune, not your fault. You _know_ yourself to be innocent, and as you do not in any way stand accused in the eyes of the officers of this army, there is absolutely no reason why you should not become one of them, as a man conscious of his own rectitude. “Besides all that, we are living in new times, under different conditions from those that existed before the war. It used to be said that in Texas it was taking an unfair advantage of any man to inquire into his life before his migration to that State. If he had conducted himself well since his arrival there, he was entitled to all his reserves with regard to his previous course of life in some other part of the country. Now a like sentiment has grown strong in the South since this war broke out. I don’t mean to suggest that we have lowered our standards of honourable conduct in the least, for we have not done so. But we have revised our judgments as to what constitutes worth. The old class distinctions of birth and heritage have given place to new tests of present conduct. There are companies by the score in this army whose officers, elected by their men, were before the war persons of much lower social position than that of a majority of their own men. In any peacetime organisation these officers could never have hoped for election to office of any kind; but they are fighters and men of capacity; they know how to do the work of war well, and, under our new and sounder standards of fitness, the men in the ranks have put aside old social distinctions and elected to command them the men fittest to command. The same principle prevails higher up. One distinguished major-general in the Confederate service was a nobody before the war; another was far worse; he was a negro trader who before the war would not have been admitted, even as a merely tolerated guest, into the houses of the gentlemen who are to-day glad to serve as officers and enlisted men under his command. Still another was an ignorant Irish