The last words came out with so proud a ring that Stonewall eyed him curiously.
‘Who are you?’ he demanded by way of reply.
‘I live in the valley,’ answered Lucius vaguely. ‘So does my chum.—Oh, sir, sir,’ he broke off wildly, ‘do believe me and let me go! They may be killing him even now.’
Jackson started in astonishment, and took a step forward. ‘You don’t ask me to believe,’ he said, ‘that you contemplate returning to the Federal lines to look for him?’
‘I do, I do!’ cried Lucius. ‘Why should I not? Twice or thrice already to-day he would have given his life to save mine. How can I desert him now? It would be too base.’
The utter simplicity of the thing carried its own conviction with it. No professional trickster would delude himself into the belief that, coming from the Federal lines, he would be at once allowed to return there on the strength of his own story. The genuine emotion of the young man, as he supposed him to be, went straight to Jackson’s warm heart.
‘Do not distress yourself, my young friend,’ he said kindly; ‘I believe you. But as regards your comrade, what do you imagine you can effect by going back?’
‘This,’ answered Lucius, as the recollection of the hut in the forest came to him like an inspiration: ‘if he has not been taken, and has not been able to break through their line, I know where he will go to look for me. I will go there. I can find out that way whether he is dead or a prisoner, or alive and free.’
‘No,’ answered Jackson; ‘for he might reach our lines just while you were looking for him. You could do no good, and for your own sake, if for no other reason, I cannot allow you to return. I do not suspect your honesty,’ as Lucius made a passionate gesture; ‘but it would serve no useful purpose. To-morrow, if God blesses our arms as He has hitherto done, we shall sweep Shields from the field, and your comrade, if he has not managed to escape, may be recovered in the struggle. At the worst he will be sent north with other prisoners, and exchanged in due course.’
‘Oh, but you are forgetting that he is a civilian,’ urged Lucius, ‘and that if they find out that he took the despatch, they will kill him for it.’ His voice trembled so that he could hardly enunciate the words.