The condition of the messenger intimated the seriousness of the call, and the surgeon hardly waited to hear more than the wild appeal--"Come at once! Captain Baynell has killed his-self--Heabenly Friend! I wish he could hev' tuk enny other premises ter hev' c'mitted the deed." As she toiled along behind the surgeon, "Oh, my Lawd an' King!" she panted at intervals. Baynell remained unconscious for some time. When at length he came to himself he was lying quietly in the great, commodious bedroom that he had of late occupied in the storm centre, the green Venetian blinds half closed, the afternoon sunlight softly flecking the carpet, the air of high decorum and gentle nurture which so characterized the place peculiarly in evidence, and old Ephraim noiselessly flitting about with a palm-leaf fan in his hand, ready to annihilate any vagrant fly with enough temerity to appear. "Ye los' yer balance, sah, an' fell down de steers," he unctuously explained. "I know--I remember that--but who--where is that Rebel officer?" "I reckon ye mus' hev' drempt about him, Cap'n," the "double-faced Janus" responded casually, with the superior air of humoring a delusion. "Ye been talkin' 'bout him afore whenst ye wuz deelerious. But dar ain't none ob dem miser'ble slave-drivers round dese diggin's now'-days, praise de Lawd! Freedom come wid de Union army." This assurance convinced the Federal officer. The old servant's interest was so obviously with the invading force that his motive was not open to question. Moreover, it was not the first time that Baynell had dreamed of the Confederate officer, the erstwhile lover of Leonora Gwynn, whose splendid portrait hung on the wall, and whom she often mentioned with interest. When the surgeon next called he expressed to his patient great surprise: "It is very natural that in your state of convalescence you should grow dizzy and fall; but I can't for my life understand how you contrived to get such a blow from the edge of a step. It has all the style about it of a hit straight from the shoulder of an expert boxer. Uncle Ephraim doesn't happen to be something of a pugilist, now?" he added jocosely, smiling and glancing at the old negro. "I don't happen to be nuffin, sah, dat ain't perlite," grinned the amenable "Janus." "Your friends downstairs seemed frightened out of their wits, Baynell,--lest your wound should be imputed to them, I suppose," the surgeon said openly, for he did not consider the presence of the ex-slave. "Yes, sah!" put in Uncle Ephraim, "eider me or Marster, or de widder 'oman, or de ladies air sure bound ter hev' knocked him up dat way, kase 'twould take a puffick reel-foot man ter fall downstairs dat fashion. Yah! Yah!"