"No. 4" stood quite still till the officer motioned him to the gate,
behind which the prisoners sat in stolid rows. Then he walked dejectedly
back into the pen, and sat down by another drunkard. His look touched me,
and I went around and talked to the magistrate privately.
But he was inexorable; he said he knew more of him than I did,
and that ten days in jail would "dry him out and be good for him."
I told him the story of the battle. He knew it already,
and said he knew more than that about him; that he had been one of
the bravest soldiers in the whole army; did not know what fear was;
had once ridden into the enemy and torn a captured standard from
its captors' hands, receiving two desperate bayonet-wounds in doing it;
and had done other acts of conspicuous gallantry on many occasions.
I pleaded this, but he was obdurate; hard, I thought at the time,
and told him so; told him he had been a soldier himself, and ought
to be easier. He looked troubled, not offended; for we were friends,
and I think he liked to see me, who had been a boy during the war,
take up for an old soldier on that ground. But he stood firm. I must do him
the justice to say that I now think it would not have made any difference
if he had done otherwise. He had tried the other course many times.

"No. 4" must have heard me trying to help him, for one day,
about a month after that, he walked in on me quite sober,
and looking somewhat as he did the first day I saw him,
thanked me for what I had done for him; delivered one of the most impressive
discourses on intemperance that I ever heard; and asked me to try
to help him get work. He was willing to do anything, he said; that is,
anything he could do. I got him a place with a friend of mine
which he kept a week, then got drunk. We got hold of him, however,
and sobered him up, and he escaped the police and the justice's court.
Being out of work, and very firm in his resolution never to drink again,