“That's neither here nor there,” replied Abner, somewhat testily. “You oughtn't to need so dummed much explainin'. I've told you what I want specially to hear. An' that's what we all want to hear.” When the women had returned, and Ni, with much deliberation, had filled both hands with selected eatables, the recital at last got under way. Its progress was blocked from time to time by sheer force of tantalizing perversity on the part of the narrator, and it suffered steadily from the incidental hitches of mastication; but such as it was we listened to it with all our ears, sitting or standing about, and keeping our eyes intently upon the freckled young hero. “It wasn't so much of a job to git down there as I'd figured on,” Ni said, between mouthfuls. “I got along on freight trains—once worked my way a while on a hand-car—as far as Albany, an' on down to New York on a river-boat, cheap, an' then, after foolin' round a few days, I hitched up with the Sanitary Commission folks, an' got them to let me sail on one o' their boats round to 'Napolis. I thought I was goin' to die most o' the voyage, but I didn't, you see, an' when I struck 'Napolis I hung around Camp Parole there quite a spell, talkin' with fellers that'd bin pris'ners down in Richmond an' got exchanged an' sent North. They said there was a whole slew of our fellers down there still that'd been brought in after Antietam. They didn't know none o' their names, but they said they'd all be sent North in time, in exchange for Johnny Rebs that we'd captured. An' so I waited round—” “You _might_ have written!” interrupted Esther, reproachfully. “What'd bin the good o' writin'? I hadn't anything to tell. Besides writin' letters is for girls. Well, one day a man come up from Libby—that's the prison at Richmond—an' he said there _was_ a tall feller there from York State, a farmer, an' he died. He thought the name was Birch, but it might 'a' been Beech—or Body-Maple, for that matter. I s'pose you'd like to had me write _that_ home!” “No—oh, no!” murmured Esther, speaking the sense of all the company. “Well, then I waited some more, an' kep' on waitin', an' then waited ag'in, until bimeby, one fine day, along comes Mr. Blue-jay himself. There he was, stan'in' up on the paddle-box with a face on him as long as your arm, an' I sung out, ‘Way there, Agrippa Hill!’ an' he come mighty nigh fallin' head over heels into the water. So then he come off, an' we shook han's, an' went up to the commissioners to see about his exchange, an'—an' as soon's that's fixed, an' the papers drawn up all correct, why, he'll come home. An' that's all there is to it.” “And even _then_ you never wrote!” said Esther, plaintively. “Hold on a minute,” put in Abner. “You say he's comin' home. That wouldn't be unless he was disabled. They'd keep him to fight ag'in, till his time was up. Come, now, tell the truth—he's be'n hurt bad!”