The sufferings of Noel and Dennis were increased by the feeling of suspense which followed the departure of the chaplain. Rumor had been busy in the camp and had reached even the men in the guard-house concerning the execution of the deserters and the penalty which now might be visited upon the men who were still under guard.

The feeling in the heart of Dennis was more one of anger than of alarm. With Noel, however, uncertainty and fear combined to make the young soldier much cast down. When Dennis occasionally tried to arouse his spirits, the effort of the young Irishman was so manifest that the effect sometimes was the exact reverse of what he had intended.

More and more Noel became alarmed as the hours passed. When the chaplain returned, as he did a few hours later, not even his cheery words could disguise the fact that as yet he had not received any information concerning the two young sharpshooters which would justify the colonel in making an exception of their cases.

When Noel awoke early the following morning he was surprised to find Dennis already busily engaged in writing a letter. And such a letter!

When Noel drew near, he saw that Dennis had taken sheets of foolscap, cutting them lengthwise and had pasted the half-sheets together so that he had a continuous roll that must have been at least thirty feet in length.

"What are you doing?" demanded Noel in surprise.

"Shure, lad, and I'm writin' a letter."

"But to whom are you writing such a letter as that? Do you write on both sides of the paper? It would take more money than you have saved in a month to pay the postage. What are you trying to do, anyway, Dennis?"

"Shure, lad," said Dennis quietly, "I had a letter from me sister in which she says as how I have niglicted the family and niver write a word, so I'm goin' to sind her one letter that she can't say is too short. I'm gettin' near the end of it, though. If you'll wait a minute, lad, I'll read to you the last sintence."

Before Noel could protest Dennis began glibly, "And now, me dear Bridget, I can tell you that I am very happy because the assurance is dawning upon me mind that I am gettin' near the end of my paper. I have only to say that after I have been through the regular number of pitched-battles and hair-breadth escapes and have walked a few hundred miles and chased the Johnnies up and down the hills, perhaps by that time I shall have come really to the ind of this letter and be able to sign me name. If you still think that I'm not writin' long enough letters to you and to mother and the girls, I'll come home just as soon as our business at the front is finished, and from the appearances at the prisent time somethin' is going to happen before I shall have a chance to sign my name."

Dennis looked up from his paper and said, "There, lad, I'm not explainin' to thim what it is that may happen. It'll be time enough for thim to find out that when they have to. But what do you think of me epistle, anyway?"

"Very good."

"What there is of it," replied Dennis, smiling in spite of the fears which held him.

"It's a sort of last will I'm writin', too," added Dennis. "I niver have written a will whin I was goin' into battle the way some o' th' boys do, but whin I have to face the sintence of bein' shot as a desarter, which I niver was, and if the Saints will presarve me, I niver shall be—"

"I heard of a woman back here," broke in Noel, "who made a will and left her shoestrings to her sister."

"Bedad," said Dennis, "I niver thought o' that. 'Tis a good suggestion! I'm goin' to leave mine to Levi Kadoff. There ought to be enough of them to hang him with. Faith, and if I had him here now—"

The conversation of the two young soldiers was interrupted once more by the return of the chaplain. Still he had not received any information and the messenger, who he assured the boys had been dispatched, had not as yet returned.

In spite of the desire of the good man to encourage the boys, and his apparently unshaken confidence that in the end all would be well, the feeling of uncertainty and injustice still possessed both Noel and Dennis. They had been forgotten, they assured themselves, by the men who knew them best and at such a time as this could bring them aid. Of what good was it that they had been selected for positions of danger and had been among the sharpshooters, doing their part in holding back the enemy around Williamsburg and at Malvern Hill?

Even if the desire had been in the minds of the young soldiers, the opportunity to escape was gone. The guard was changed every hour now, and there was no question that the muskets of the marching soldiers were loaded. There was no blank cartridge here.

Noel's strong desire was to receive word from those who knew him. But just where that division of the army now was located he did not know, nor was he positive that there would be an opportunity in the presence of threatening events for an investigation to be made which would relieve him from the charge which was hanging over him.

A third visit from the chaplain still failed to bring the desired news. The depression of the boys was so manifest that the chaplain apparently made a special effort to cheer them.

"There was a little fellow back here near the colonel's tent who somehow made me think of you two boys. You have told me about the little sutler. Let me see, what did you say his name is?"

"Levi. Levi Kadoff," answered Noel.

"Well, this little fellow by the colonel's tent may be the same one. He was a little Jew, who had been shot. A ball had just grazed the tips of two of his fingers and he was howling so loudly that I think you might have heard him here, if you had listened."

"Was he yelling with pain?"

"Oh, no!" laughed the chaplain. "He was crying for a pension. In fact, he was screaming for one. Yes, he wanted two pensions. When I saw him he was holding up the two fingers that had been scratched, and was whining, 'Oh, Scheneral! Oh, Scheneral! how much pensions I gets for heem? I dink I gets two pensions, maybe. One for each finger vat I lose.' A lot of the boys had gathered around the little fellow and they were having a good time as they listened to his complaints."

"Did he say where he was when he was shot?"

"No, I didn't hear anything about that."

"Maybe he is Levi. If he is, and you'll bring him here, Dennis and I soon can tell. Did he have shining black eyes?"

"Yes."

"And curly black hair?"

"Yes."

"And did he weigh about ninety pounds?"

"Not more than that."

"Well, that's Levi; that's Levi, all right," broke in Dennis. "Just bring him here to me, and I'll make him forgit his fingers and his pinsions."

"You may make him forget his fingers, but you never can make him forget his pensions," laughed the chaplain. "That seemed to be the chief thing in his mind. I think I'll try to find out if his name is Levi Kadoff."

"If it is," suggested Noel, "bring the fellow here, but don't tell him what you are bringing him for or that we are here."

"I'll see what I can do," said the chaplain, and a moment later he departed from the tent.

The fact that the kind-hearted officer had made three visits that day to the boys showed his interest in their welfare, but somehow Noel was unable to shake off his conviction that their friend was powerless to aid them. Accordingly he was surprised when an hour afterward the chaplain returned.

"No word yet," he said quietly, as he smiled and shook his head, "but I have some other good news for you. You understand there is nothing to back up the statement which you have made that you were sharpshooters in the Peninsula campaign. Personally, I believe what you tell me. I have at last secured permission for you both to go with an orderly and four men to a place outside the camp where you may show what skill you possess."

"That's the way to talk," spoke up Dennis quickly. His hope had now returned with full force. Indeed, as he afterward explained, he looked upon their discharge as already having been accomplished.

To Noel, however, the privilege was not one which was unmixed with anxiety. In his own skill, in his quiet way, he felt confident, but to make such skill a test of the truth of what he had spoken was another matter. A gun with which he was unfamiliar would be thrust into his hands and the very excitement of the test of itself might be sufficient to prevent him from doing himself full justice.

The chaplain, aware of what was passing in the mind of the young soldier, smiled encouragingly and did not speak.

Dennis, whose joy rapidly increased, had now arrived at a point where his enthusiasm seemed to pass all bounds.

"I'll tell you what to do, yer Riverence," he said to the chaplain. "Just put Noel and me tin yards apart. Let one of us fire and then the other and you'll find Noel's bullet lodged in the barrel of my gun and my bullet in his. That is, if we don't fire at the same time. If we should fire at the same minute the bullets would meet midway and you wouldn't find anything but two flattened pieces of lead."

"Do you often have an experience like that?" inquired the chaplain with a smile.

"Oh, yis, very oftin," answered Dennis solemnly. "Sometimes Noel says to me,' Dennis, me boy, I'm a bit tired this mornin'. Just put a bullet in my gun, please'; and it's easier to shoot one in than it is to have to go through the whole process o' loadin'."

The chaplain said no more, but at once conducted the two young soldiers to the guard which was waiting outside the tent.

No word was spoken as the little band fell in, and at the word of the orderly started in the direction which to Noel's surprise led over the way by which he had come when he had been brought to the camp. As yet he had not been able to obtain from Dennis a connected story of the mishaps of the young Irish soldier, nor of the way by which he had avoided his enemies and at last had been taken as a deserter and confined in the guard-tent.

Noel somehow believed that not even Dennis would have been able to escape from the well in which he had been hidden unless he had received help from outside. But to all inquiries Dennis made evasive replies, and Noel was still unable to understand the mystery with which he had shrouded his doings.

The little band now was on the borders of the place where the division was encamped. The entire region was unfamiliar to Noel, but as he glanced at a low house on the side of the road over which they were passing he was startled when he beheld Levi standing by the little cabin. The little sutler's fingers were bandaged, and as Noel recalled the story which the chaplain related to him and the pleadings of the little Jew for two pensions because he had received a wound in the tips of two fingers, he smiled in spite of the seriousness of the errand upon which he and his companion were going.

Suddenly Levi recognized the two young soldiers in the midst of the little band, and with a scream of rage instantly started toward them.