Few men have ever looked less funny than he as he reflected on the episode. He recovered his equanimity only gradually, but especially after he had been able to make arrangements to convey intelligence to his mother within the Federal lines as to his sister's safety. This was rendered possible by a flag of truce sent out almost immediately by Colonel Monette, who with Lieutenant Seymour was in the greatest anxiety as to her fate, feeling a sense of responsibility in the matter. She insisted on adding a line addressed to the younger officer, bidding him sing daily with his hand on his heart:-- "'Would I were with thee!'--_In the Confederate lines!_" if he expected her to conserve any faith in his constancy. That evening Jim Fisher almost regained his wonted cheerfulness. The other four brothers had gathered together to welcome the unexpected guest, and as they sat around a great wood fire in an old deserted farm-house, a primitive structure built of logs, with Millie and the youngest, favorite brother, Walter, in the centre, it seemed so joyful a reunion that he was almost tempted to forgive the manner in which it had come about. Jim Fisher's body-servant, Cæsar, cooked a supper for them, in a room across an open passage, consisting of corn-bread, bean-coffee, bacon, and a chicken, which last came as a miracle, as he mysteriously expressed it, upon inquiry--"as de mussy ob Providence!" Cæsar was a brisk young darkey, with a capacity for a sullen and lowering change, and with a great distaste for ridicule, induced by much suffering as the butt of the practical jokes of his young masters, for among so many Fisher boys one or another must needs be always disposed for mirth. "You needn't ax me so p'inted 'bout dat chicken's pedigree, Marse Watt," Cæsar was beguiled into retorting acrimoniously. "Naw, sah. I dunno. I dunno whedder hit's Dominicky or Shanghai. An' _ye_ have no call to know whedder hit's foreign or native! _I_ tell you hit's fried--an' dat's all I'm _gwine_ ter tell you!--fried ter a turn! An' if you bed enny religion, you'd say grace, an' give Miss Millie a piece while it's hot. Naw, sah! naw, Marse Watt! I _ain't_ no robber! Marse Jim--you hear what Marse Watt done call me! Naw, sah! I don't expec' ter see Satan!--not _dis week_, nohow." Cæsar was glad to gather up the fragments and make off to the kitchen opposite, where he sat before the fire and crunched the last bone of the precious fowl, and grinned over the adroit methods of its capture on this great occasion, for such a luxury could hardly be bought at any price, in Confederate money or any other currency.