Here we are still outside the works and I am writing this on a cracker box. I thought sure by the time I penned another line we would be inside and the stronghold would be ours. But old Ulys, which is what the boys call him, hasn’t sent us in yet. However they cannot withstand us very long now as a fellow came within our lines yesterday and said the food over there was a minus quantity and he hoped we wouldn’t give him any mule-beef. Tell Ma I never rec’d. the last three bundles she sent. No doubt they have been eaten by somebody afore this. Ralph Tolis got sick a Friday and was sent back to the hospital. It is a kind of stomach fever. We pray that he may fully recover his health and spirits at once. The weather has been very hot and there is considerable grumbling and not a little sickness, but you know dear Parents that I will always look out for Number One. Tell Grace we have yet no word from Clark and it is feared he fell in the last assault or was taken prisoner. That is something which I would not want to happen to me I can tell you. The boys are playing a good deal of Bluff, but no one has much money and most of the betting is done in paper currency (fractions at that) or secesh shinplasters which are dear at any price. You can buy a bushel for only a mite of change. There is artillery fire on our right daily, but thus …

Orcutt stopped short and put the letter down. “No,” he said, “I presume that he has not yet been made a corporal. My apologies for having kept you waiting.” He removed his glasses again and looked at them critically, holding the jointed lens before the flame. “I,” he began, “ahh—” and then stopped and said nothing more.

“I hope he comes through safely,” Dan said.

Orcutt scraped his throat. He stood up and offered a loose hand. “I trust that I may serve you with satisfaction,” he declared. “Will you call again, within a few days?”

“Yes,” said Bale … He went down the knotted, slanting cavern of the stairway. Outside, clouds were solid and dark gray and very low, rubbing close above the square red chimneys of the town. Even this rainy world was a hundred degrees lighter than the den where Julius Orcutt sat ready to serve him with satisfaction … He thought of Benjy Orcutt, waddling after a tribe of scabby-legged boys through the soft fields along Pitzer’s Run. Fat buttocks, crooked teeth, stiff yellow fuzz. He thought, “And whatever humanity lives within his father—whatever kindled the flicker in his eyes—that spark will be puffed out when it happens to Benjy … Vicksburg is so far away.”