“You will escape; you will go home again: and if you do, write to Charlie’s mother, and tell her how he died. Tell her not to weep for him so early saved. Her letter is in his pocket: take it as a guide where to direct your own.” This he said to Isaac, for he saw Tom was disabled. Isaac did as he was bidden, and the letter from Charlie’s mother, written but a week before, was safely put away for future reference, and then Isaac did for the North Carolina soldier what the North Carolina soldier had done for the Yankee boy: he staunched the flowing blood as best he could, bathed the throbbing head, and held the cooling water to the dry, parched lips, which feebly murmured their thanks. The stranger saw the distinction there was between his new-found friends, and feeling that Tom was the one to whom he must appeal, he turned his glazed eyes upon him, and said: “Whose government will answer for all this, yours or the one that I acknowledge?” “Both, both!” Tom replied vehemently; and the stranger rejoined: “Yes, both have much to answer for,—one for not yielding a little more, and the other for its rash impetuosity. Oh, had we, as a people, know each other; could we have guessed what brave, kind hearts there were both North and South, we should never have come to this; but we believed our leaders too much; trusted too implicitly in the dastardly falsehoods of a lying press; and it has brought us here. For myself I am willing to die in a good cause; and of course I think _ours_ is just; exactly as you think of yours; but who will care for my poor Nellie I left in my Southern home? What splendid victory can repay her for the husband she will lose ere yonder sun has set, or what can compensate my daughter Maude or my boy Charlie for their loss? The North Carolinian paused from exhaustion, and Tom essayed to comfort him. Bending over him, and supporting the drooping head which dropped lower and lower, the lips whispering of _Nelly_, of Maud and Charlie, and of the Tar River winding past their door, until there seemed no longer life in that once vigorous frame. “He’s dead,” Isaac was about to say, but the words froze on his lips, for in the distance he caught sight of two other men coming towards them,—one strong and powerful, the other slight and girlish-looking. Tom saw them, too, and turning to Isaac, said hurriedly, “Run, my boy, and leave me. They will think far more of capturing an officer than a private. You can escape as well as not,—run, quick.” But Isaac would share Capt. Carleton’s fate, whatever that might be, and with a deep flush on his boyish face, he drew nearer to his companion and stood gazing defiantly at the Rebels as they came up. “We have nothing to hope,” Tom whispered, “but we’ll sell ourselves dearly as possible,” and bracing himself against the tree, he prepared to do battle, refusing at once the bullying Rebel’s command, “Surrender or die.”