"Master Le Geyt!" exclaimed that officer as he saw his visitor, "I had decided you were in the rebels' hands."
"Hasn't Captain Howell come back?" the young scout asked, eager to learn all he might about that officer before telling the story of his prolonged absence.
"Yes," the general replied; "but he can explain nothing."
"Last night he crawled over the barricade on which his corps was at work, and fell unconscious among the men. They brought him into camp and called the surgeon. He examined him, finding one leg broken. Evidently he had crawled many miles in that condition, and was nearly exhausted. When did you part with him?"
"Has he not been able to tell you any thing?" asked the lad, giving no heed to General Burgoyne's question.
"He has been in a delirium ever since, and we can get nothing from him save fragments of a story. He has spoken of the Yankees, your capture, and his fall. We could only suppose that you two had run against some of the rebels during the tramp; that you had been captured, he got away, and was injured during his flight. We shall have to depend on your report to straighten matters out."
"There is not much to tell," the lad replied. "We stopped in an abandoned hut for the night, and were awakened by the sound of voices. He jumped from the cabin window and got away; but half a dozen rebels entered the building before I could escape. I stayed there until this morning, when they let me go, deciding, perhaps, that I was not worth keeping."
"You were fortunate indeed. I presume, then, you discovered no road around the rebel barricades?"
"No," Ira replied. "They increase rather than diminish in number, and below here a few miles is a huge swamp, which, for some reason, is flooding rapidly. By the time we arrive there I believe it will be well-nigh impassable."
"What a way in which to fight!" exclaimed the officer in disgust. "If they would only come out in the open and give me a chance I would soon scatter them like chaff before the wind. But here they are blocking the way, exhausting my stores, forcing me to change all my plans of campaign; it is enough to make a saint angry!" and by this time he had worked himself into such a rage that the hearer was glad, on the plea of being tired, to retire to his own quarters.