"He's a second lieutenant, General, in the Sixth Missouri. Captain
wounded at Hindman, and first lieutenant fell out down below. His name is
Brice, I believe."

"I thought so," said the General.

Some few days afterward, when the troops were slopping around again at
Young's Point, opposite Vicksburg, a gentleman arrived on a boat from St.
Louis. He paused on the levee to survey with concern and astonishment the
flood of waters behind it, and then asked an officer the way to General
Sherman's headquarters. The officer, who was greatly impressed by the
gentleman's looks, led him at once to a trestle bridge which spanned the
distance from the levee bank over the flood to a house up to its first
floor in the backwaters. The orderly saluted.

"Who shall I say, sir?"

The officer looked inquiringly at the gentleman, who gave his name.

The officer could not repress a smile at the next thing that happened.
Out hurried the General himself, with both hands outstretched.

"Bless my soul!" he cried, "if it isn't Brinsmade. Come right in, come
right in and take dinner. The boys will be glad to see you. I'll send and
tell Grant you're here. Brinsmade, if it wasn't for you and your friends
on the Western Sanitary Commission, we'd all have been dead of fever and
bad food long ago." The General sobered abruptly. "I guess a good many of
the boys are laid up now," he added.