“Give me a chance, Frank,” he said, and prepared to run. But as he went, or rather before he had left the ground on which he was standing before his brother, a shot struck him, and he was disabled. In a minute he was as though he were stunned; then he smiled faintly, and slowly sunk upon the ground.

“It’s all up, Frank,” he said, “and you are in at the death.”

Frank Reckenthorpe was soon kneeling beside his brother, amidst a crowd of his own men.

“Spurrell,” he said, to a young officer who was close to him, “it is my own brother.”

“What, General Tom?” said Spurrell. “Not dangerously, I hope?”

By this time the wounded man had been able, as it were, to feel himself, and to ascertain the amount of the damage done to him.

“It’s my right leg,” he said; “just on the knee. If you’ll believe me, Frank, I thought it was my heart at first. I don’t think much of the wound, but I suppose you won’t let me go.”

Of course they wouldn’t let him go, and indeed if they had been minded so to do, he could not have gone. The wound was not fatal, as he had at first thought; but neither was it a matter of little consequence, as he afterwards asserted. His fighting was over, unless he could fight with a leg amputated between the knee and the hip.

Before nightfall General Tom found himself in his brother’s quarters, a prisoner on parole, with his leg all but condemned by the surgeon. The third day after that saw the leg amputated. For three weeks the two brothers remained together, and after that the elder was taken to Washington, or rather to Alexandria, on the other side of the Potomac, as a prisoner, there to await his chance of exchange. At first the intercourse between the two brothers was cold, guarded, and uncomfortable; but after a while it became more kindly than it had been for many a day. Whether it were cold or kindly, its nature, we may be sure, was such as the younger brother made it. Tom was ready enough to forget all personal animosity as soon as his brother would himself be willing to do so; though he was willing enough also to quarrel,—to quarrel bitterly as ever,—if Frank should give him occasion. As to that threat of the pistol, it had passed away from Tom Reckenthorpe, as all his angry words passed from him. It was clean forgotten. It was not simply that he had not wished to kill his brother, but that such a deed was impossible to him. The threat had been like a curse that means nothing,—which is used by passion as its readiest weapon when passion is impotent. But with Frank Reckenthorpe words meant what they were intended to mean. The threat had rankled in his bosom from the time of its utterance, to that moment when a strange coincidence had given the threatener the power of executing it. The remembrance of it was then strong upon him, and he had expected that his brother would have been as bad as his word.

But his brother had spared him; and now, slowly, by degrees, he began to remember that also.

“What are your plans, Tom?” he said, as he sat one day by his brother’s bed before the removal of the prisoner to Alexandria.

“Plans?” said Tom. “How should a poor fellow like me have plans? To eat bread and water in prison at Alexandria, I suppose.”

“They’ll let you up to Washington on your parole, I should think. Of course, I can say a word for you.”

“Well, then, do say it. I’d have done as much for you, though I don’t like your Yankee politics.”

“Never mind my politics now, Tom.”

“I never did mind them. But at any rate, you see I can’t run away.”