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and lost his business. When first we met, in the shocked weeks after Shiloh, the fellow was a gentleman’s gentleman in service to a Confederate of good family.
    An excellent doer at table, Mr. Barnaby was confident at the hip. Shaped like a ripened pear, he was not slovenly fat, but stout and strong. His beef rode high in front. It looked as if a cannonball were about to explode upward through his waistcoat. Bald but for a fringe of chestnut hair and long of face with a plump nose misattached, his person made no proper sense, but seemed randomly collected, if abundant. He was a good-natured fellow who killed without dismay, when events required.
    English-born though he was, we had grown fond in the days we rode together, pursuing killers who claimed to act for God. But that is another tale. When last I saw him, Mr. Barnaby had enjoyed a wound to his posterior, which invalided him from the field for uncertain months.
    As I heard his footsteps returning, I recalled that Captain Bolt had said “the fat man” had been responsible for my rescue.
    Had Mr. Barnaby saved me twice in the course of a single day? That was a heavy debt.
    He had retrieved not only a towel, but also the clean uniform I had left with the bath attendant.
    Averting his eyes as a gentleman should do, Mr. Barnaby tossed me the cloth then looked over my uniform, inspecting the stitching and trim. He did seem in a state of some anxiety.
    “Lovely work!” he declared. “Fit for a very general! Why, when I ’ad my establishment on Canal Street, I ’adn’t no more than two tailors I could call upon to do such sewing as this ’ere.”
    “It is my own wife’s work,” I told him proudly. “My Mary is become the proprietress of a grand dressmaking establishment.”
    Now, you will say: “Since when is your wife’s dressmaking shop so grand? We thought it was a small affair in Pottsville.” But I will tell you: Grand enough it seemed to me, and a fellow must not insult his dear wife’s efforts. And truth be told, who among us does not like to put the best face on matters?
    “Lovely work, just lovely! And, bless me, not a single drop of blood on any inch of it!”
    “Why,” I asked, as I rubbed myself down and the serpent gave a jerk, “should there be blood, Mr. Barnaby?”
    His eyebrows lifted as if to say the matter was self-evident. “Well, the fellow who ’ad the night duty was brushing down your kit when they cut ’is throat. Gashed as wide as a melon carved with a butcher’s knife, ’e is. They must’ve been wicked quick, sir, for I didn’t see nobody as I stepped in myself.” He looked at me, disregarding my condition of immodesty. “I must say, begging your pardon, Major Jones, that you does seem to leave an unreasonable number of corpses behind when you visit us.”
    “Mr. Barnaby … I must ask you a thing. Did you report to the authorities that I had been buried alive?”
    He shook his head. Bewildered. “No such thing, sir! No such thing at all!”
    I was befuddled. “But …”
    “All I told ’em,” Mr. Barnaby said, “was that you ’ad been kidnapped from a ’ouse in the Vieux Carré. Couldn’t ’ardly believe my eyes, when I seen ’em dragging you out of Miss Ruby’s salon, as we likes to call it. Couldn’t ’ardly believe it.” He shook his long head until his belly trembled. “At first, I thought you might ’ave ’ad a few sips too many and made a bit of trouble for the ladies, requiring a certain amount of physical restraint. But then I remembered ’ow you was always going on about John Wesley and Methodism and other such dreadful matters, and I began to suspect that something wasn’t quite right between Brighton and Bristol. After I saw Petit Jean come down the steps, ’im bleeding like an Irishman’s ’eart at the sight of an empty bottle, I knew you ’adn’t found New Orleans welcoming.”
    I wished to inquire as to the identity of “Petit Jean,” who I supposed must be the giant negro. But