“That’s what Lincoln thinks of such things. And I, for one, would rather be judged by Abraham Lincoln than by any other man alive. Man, don’t look so dumfounded! You’ve been in a fool nightmare. Wake up!”
“Do you mean, sir, that—”
“I mean I’m going to tell your story to everyone who asks me about you. And I’m going to write to the President about it next time I send him a report. It’s the sort of story he likes to hear.
“Good Lord! Do you think it’s nothing for a man to drop drink at your age and make his life all over afresh? Why, why—curse it all, shake hands! And get out of here. I’m busy.”
Dad walked away, his feet on air; the angry fuming of the general behind him sounding like wondrous music in his ears.
All at once he seemed like Christian in his favorite “Pilgrim’s Progress” to have dropped from his shoulders a world-heavy burden which had crushed him to earth. All at once his terrible secret was seen by him through Hooker’s keen eyes. And from that moment it forever lost its terror.
“I—I wish,” he murmured, “I wish I knew just exactly where Mrs. Sessions is. I’d love to tell her. And, till I can tell her—I guess I’ll be happy over it all alone. James Brinton. Lieutenant-Colonel James Brinton. Of Taylor’s staff!”
CHAPTER XXV
THE THREE COMRADES
BREVET-MAJOR JAMES DADD, of the Blankth Ohio Infantry, was one of his own tent’s three occupants.
Seated cross-legged on a blanket roll facing the cot where sat his grandfather, was Battle Jimmie. Between the boy’s knees reclined the tent’s third inmate, his Canine Majesty, Emperor Napoleon Peter Bub Bonaparte Brinton Dog, whose august title had been whittled down by custom and verbal necessity to “Emp.”