"Would it have been less strange," I inquired, "if you had been in an old
oak clearing grown up with pine bushes?"

"No, he'd have got away just the same."

"What! you didn't bring him in?"


"Only part of the way. Then he broke and ran."

"And you had to shoot him?"

"No, I didn't even shoot at him. I couldn't, Smith; _he looked so much
like me_. It was like seeing my own ghost. All the time I had him
something kept saying to me, 'You're your own prisoner--you're your own
prisoner.' And--do you know?--that thing comes back to me now every time I
get into the least sort of a tight place!"

"I wish it would come to me," I responded. A slave girl brought his coat
and our talk remained unfinished until five years after the war.



III


Gregory had been brought up on the shore of Mississippi Sound, a beautiful
region fruitful mainly in apathy of character. He was a skilled lover of
sail-boats. When we all got back to New Orleans, paroled, and cast about
for a living in the various channels "open to gentlemen," he, largely, I