It required, too, some mental readjustment to recognize the "Baby-chile" in the young Samson, who had almost carried off the gates of the town itself, the key of the whole department, on his stalwart back. This phrase was even more frequently repeated as Uncle Ephraim entered upon the details of Julius's escape and his attack on Baynell--it seemed to mitigate the intensity with which he played at the game of war to speak of it as the freaks of a "Baby-chile." The witness could produce no replies to the question, and indeed he had no recollection, as to how Julius Roscoe became possessed of the facts concerning the works, for old Ephraim did not realize that he himself had afforded this information--acquired in aimlessly tagging after the detail sent for ammunition, the negroes coming and going with scant restriction in the camps of their liberators. But very careful was he to let fall no word of the citizen's dress he had conveyed to the "Baby-chile" in the grotto, under cover of night. "Bress Gawd!" he said to himself, "it's de Cap'n on trial--_not me_!" He detailed with great candor the lies he had told Captain Baynell, when, emerging from his long insensibility, he had asked about the Rebel officer. "It was a dream," the witness had told "Cap'n." In Captain Baynell's earlier illness he had often been delirious, and it had amused him when he recovered to hear the quaint things he had said; sometimes "Cap'n" himself described to Judge Roscoe or to the surgeon the queer sights he had seen, the results of the morphine administered. So in this instance he had hardly seemed surprised, but had let it pass like the rest. Uncle Ephraim did not vary these statements in any degree, not even under the ordeal of cross-examination. Indeed, he stood this remarkably well and left the impression he had made unimpaired. But when he was told that he might stand aside, and it entered into his comprehension that the phrase meant that he might leave the room, he fairly chirped with glee and obvious relief. "Thankee, Marse Gen'al!" he said to the youngest member of the court, a captain, to whom he had persisted in addressing most of his replies, and had continuously promoted to the rank of general, as if this high station obviously best accorded with the young officer's deserts. Old Ephraim scuttled off to the door, stumbling and hirpling in his haste and agitation, and it had not closed on him, when his "Bress de Lawd! he done delivered me f'om dem dat would have devoured me!" resounded through the room. There was a laugh outside--somebody in the corridor opined that the court-martial wanted no such tough old morsel, but not a smile touched the serious faces on each side of the table, and the next witness was summoned.