Joseph stopped, almost shy, while his father hastened to assure him.
“Oh, yes, yes! I do believe you, Joseph.”
“Well, father, sometimes nights, when I’ve sat by a camp-fire or paced a lonely post doing sentry-go, I’ve wondered if my business was necessarily as important as I used to think it was; and I wondered if I didn’t make the mistake of thinking that Almighty God created the world just for that business of mine; and if I wasn’t rather harsh with you.”
“Joe!” exclaimed Dad in wonder; but his son plunged on:
“And now when I’ve found how dev’lishly hard—yes, dev’lish, though you know I never did believe in cussing—how dev’lishly hard it was just to be a private, and forget your own cold feet and stinging eyes when you were ordered out in the night to trot down in front—ugh!—down there in the darkness where little flashes showed the enemy were waiting for you—when I found out how hard that was, and now I find you here an officer—and you so much older than I—oh!”
His voice rose almost to a shriek.
“Those flashes—us sitting by the fire, thinking of home and the office, and feeling so safe, and then having to shoulder Springfields and trot down there where there might be a Reb behind every tree—father, I swear to you that often—often—it was because I remembered that I was the son of a soldier that I was able to do it.
“Business had killed something in me, but war seems to have brought it to life again, and I’m proud of you—proud—oh, Daddy—oh, I’ve wanted to tell you—”
He choked. The wound and the shock were doing their work on self-contained Joseph Brinton.
Captain James Dadd, falling on his knees beside the rude and cluttered cot, smoothed his son’s hair. He darted out to the spring at the back of the cottage and brought his cap full of water, and bathed Joseph’s forehead, all the while agitatedly insisting: