The sergeant's ruddy, handsome face was the only cheerful object within the prison yard as he walked up and down, crossing the sentry's beat. The yard was small--it was at the back of the gloomy brick building--and only one narrow window looked out upon it. The day was dark and dull. The soldier marching up and down, clutching his musket, looked sulky and cold, and he wondered why a man like Sergeant Heywood, who didn't have to do sentry duty, should be pacing back and forth for two hours at a stretch. The sight of a prisoner's face at the barred window did not add to the cheerfulness of the surroundings. The face was curiously twisted and distorted by a shot that had torn through the jaw. It would have been repulsive but for the eyes--eyes pathetic, curious, patient, almost the color of the faded "butternut" clothes of the prisoner. As soon as the sergeant saw the poor face at the window he halted in his walk, and called out, cheerily, "Hello, Kaintuck!" "Hello!" responded Kaintuck, with equal cheeriness, but in a thin, soft voice, such as might be expected to come out of his narrow chest. "How are you to-day?" continued the sergeant. "Purty well, considerin'," answered Kaintuck. "Las' night I didn't sleep very well. This here old jaw got to achin'; an', by golly, sergeant, she kin everlastin' ache when she starts in! Ef it hadn't ben for that terbacker you give me yesterday, I'll 'low I'd had a sorter onpleasant time. But it was a comfort, cert'n'y. Before I lit my pipe it seemed like I never was goin' ter see Polly an' the kid no more, that you blarsted Yankees was a-goin' ter whip us, spite o' General Lee, an' that this here jaw was a-goin' ter come all ter pieces. But I hadn't hardly lighted that pipe, sir, before I seen Polly an' the kid right before me, lookin' peart an' gay, an' Marse Bob had done licked you all like the devil, an' my jaw was all right, an' goin' ter stay so. That's what terbacker does for a man." The sergeant accepted these indications of the prisoner's sympathies with great good-humor. "I've got some more of that same brand," said he; "it affects me kinder the same way too. When I smoke, it seems to me General Grant is marchin' into Richmond, and the bands is playin' 'Yankee Doodle,' and I'm a colonel ridin' at the head of my regiment." Kaintuck smiled at this. His smile was a mere contortion, but his deep strange eyes smiled luminously. "I reckon it's a kinder universal comforter. Did it bring your wife and your kids right up before you?" The sergeant was a great strapping fellow, six feet high; but at this pleasantry he blushed like a girl. "I ain't got a wife, nor kids either; but--" "You've got a girl, hain't you? Come, sergeant, let's hear 'bout it. It's mighty lonesome somehow in this Government hotel."