into thin pones, which he baked upon a rusty piece of tin laid on a bed of coals. Then he found a broken knife and cut a few rashers of bacon and fried them in an ancient skillet. The cabin filled with a savoury odor! Edward turned on the pallet. “Uncle, are you cooking for two?”

The meal, his first that day, restored him to himself. By now it took much to kill or permanently disable a Confederate soldier. Life forever out of doors, the sky for roof, the earth for bed, spare and simple diet, body trained and exercised, senses cleared and nerves braced by danger grown the element in which he moved and had his being, hope rising clear from much reason for despair, ideality intact in the midst of grimmest realities, a mind made up, cognizant of great issues and the need of men—the Confederate soldier had no intention of dying before his time. Nowadays it took a bullet through heart or head to give a man his quietus. The toppling caisson and the bayou had failed to give Edward Cary his.

The young white man and the old negro shared scrupulously between them the not over-great amount of corn bread and bacon. The negro placed Edward’s portion before him on a wooden stool and took his own to the bench beside the hearth. The wind blew, the rain dashed against the hut, the flames leaped from resinous pine knot to pine knot.

8Supper finished, talk began. “How far from the river are we?”

8

“Ef you’ll tell ’Rasmus, sah, ’Rasmus’ll tell you! En rights hit oughter be two miles, but I’s got er kind ob notion dat de ribber’s done crope nigher.”

Edward listened to the wind and rain. “What’s to hinder it from coming nigher yet?”

“Nothin’, sah.”

The young man got up, somewhat unsteadily, from the pallet, and with his hand against the wall moved to the door, opened it, and looked out. He shivered, then laughed. “Noah must have seen something like it when he looked out of the Ark!” He closed the door with difficulty.

Behind him, the negro continued to speak. “Leastways, dar’s only de Cape Jessamine levee.”

“Cape Jessamine?”

“De Gaillard place, sah.”

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