Regularly Broussard went to see him at the prison and the two men, the high-minded officer and the disgraced private, were drawn together by the secret bond between them.

Often, they talked in whispers of their dead mother and Broussard would say to Lawrence: "Our mother's spirit and your wife's love ought to save you." Another visitor Lawrence had was Sergeant McGillicuddy.

The Sergeant's merciful soul could not accept the chaplain's theory that the blow provoked by McGillicuddy had been Lawrence's salvation.
"I never knew a man who was helped by being a deserter, sir," was the Sergeant's answer to the chaplain's kindly sophism, "but Lawrence is a penitent man--that I see with my own eyes.

I don't need no chaplain to tell me that, sir." Meanwhile, Broussard kept up a steady courtship of Colonel Fortescue.
Whatever views the Colonel advanced, Broussard promptly endorsed.

He gave up cock fighting, motors, superfluous clothes and high-priced horses, and, if his word could be taken for it, he had adopted Spartan tastes and meant to stick to them.