"How did our boys treat you?" I asked. "Very fair," he said quickly, with a faint Judas-start, as if it were a matter of conscience, and he had now twitched it out. "They done well by me." Here was good fortune, indeed! The mine, with all its riches, mine without any digging. "I am glad of it," I said, briefly; for I saw that laconics were his jewels, perhaps from a sense of expediency as well as of beauty. "We always try to treat you well, whenever we are not firing our guns at you." This he acknowledged with a nod, but without turning from his look directly front. "I lay two months in hosp't'l," he began again,--"in Fred'r'k, in Mar'land. I was wounded in the hip." "In '62, I suppose?" said I. "Yes,--at Boonsboro'." Here the conversation ended as suddenly as it had opened. It was very clear that the Sergeant had said his last word for some time. But I was convinced in my own mind that at length more good would fall to my lot. He pondered the matter some ten minutes, and then quite overwhelmed me with his story. "One of your boys," he began, "lay wounded by me on the field,--of a ball in the lungs,--and wanted some water. Whenever he spoke, he threw out blood, and wasn't likely to live, nohow. I said,---- "'Yank, will you take my tin?'--for there was a drop in it yet, and I rolled on my side and gave it him. "'I am goin' to die,' he said. "'Yes,' says I. "'They'll treat you well,' he said; 'they'll carry you to the hosp't'l, and I hope you'll live to git home.' "'Thank you,' says I. "He gave me some 'baccy and a roll of money. "'The paymaster's been about, and he gave me more 'n I want now. You'll want 'baccy in hosp't'l,--you'll want it all,' he said. "And he run over in blood and died. He gave me right smart of money. I rolled away from him when he died, and they took me to hosp't'l." The Sergeant paused for my comment. Under my peculiar circumstances, I was very much touched by this story. "Poor fellow! many such a one has gone to his account," I said, sadly. "And I want to give back some of the money to you," said the Sergeant. I looked at him in astonishment. "You'll want it down there, as much as you can git. I have no need of it. It a'n't mine. It's his'n." The Sergeant had evidently taken it in trust. "What claim have I to it?" I asked. "Any poor fellow's got a claim to it. It's meant to help poor fellows, that money is. It's a dead man's work." I was more than ever touched now, in the presence of the wealth of this mine which I had tapped. "I will take some of it, Sergeant," I replied; "and I shall do my best to use it as well as you have." (This incident, strange to say, in its display of human purity, almost tempted me to abandon my scheme of escape, and to go with the Sergeant down to Richmond. But he was no measure of his fellows.) After that we chatted easily off and on, and had a feeling of confidence in each other which a two or three days' march could not alone have created.