He found the place where he had slipped down the bank and the torn bushes and grass showed that he had made a fine trail.

He pulled himself back up by the bushes and reentered the garden, where he was halted at once by two watchful sentries.
"Lieutenant Richard Mason of Colonel Winchester's staff," he said, "returning from the pursuit of a fugitive." The men knew him and they said promptly: "Pass Lieutenant Mason." But despite the dark they stared at him very curiously, and when he walked on toward the piazza one of them muttered to the other: "I guess he must have overtook that fugitive he was chasin'." Dick walked up the steps upon the piazza, where some one had lighted a small lamp, near which stood Colonel Winchester and his staff.
"Here's Dick!" exclaimed Warner in a tone of great relief.
"And we thought we had lost him," said Colonel Winchester, gladness showing in his voice.

Then he added: "My God, Dick, what have you been doing to yourself ?" "Yes, what kind of a transformation is this ?" added a major.

"You've certainly come back with a face very different from the one with which you left us!" Dick turned fiery red.

He suddenly became conscious that he had a left ear of enormous size, purple and swollen, that his left eye was closing fast, that the blood was dripping from cuts on either cheek, that the blood had flowed down the middle of his forehead and had formed a little stalactite on the end of his nose, that his chin had been gashed in five places by a strong fist, and that he had contributed his share to the bloodshed of the war.
"If I didn't know these were modern times," said Warner, "I'd say that he had just emerged from a sanguinary encounter bare-handed in the Roman arena with a leopard." Dick glared at him.
"It was you who gave the alarm of fire, was it not ?" asked Colonel Winchester.
"Yes, sir.