“That’s it. Now the gov’ment was silly enough not to want Lieutenant-Colonel Brinton back in the army. Even as a private, most likely. But how is the gov’ment going to know you’re Lieutenant-Colonel James Brinton unless you tell ’em so? Why, there ain’t a chance in a billion you’ll run across anyone you used to know. And if you did—well, a man changes a whole lot in fourteen years. I know I have.”
The veteran’s mind blazed with the new thought—a plan so simple, so safe, so feasible that he marveled at his own drink-dulled brain for not sooner seizing upon it.
Details were still in a jumble; but the basic thought possessed him to the very soul.
“I read in the Herald,” went on Jimmie, his voice cracking with excitement, “that there’s a new recruiting camp at Cincinnati. Go there. It’s only forty miles. You can make it in two days easy. And there you won’t run into any of the home folks. They’re all enlisting at Columbus.”
Dad was sitting bolt upright in bed, his every nerve tense. Twenty years had tumbled from his suddenly straightened shoulders.
“Jimmie!” he gasped. “Jimmie! Oh, son, you’re a wonder!”
“You—you’ll do it, Dad?” cried the boy.
“Do it?” echoed Brinton. “Yes!”
The boy gave his grandfather a rapturous hug and squealed aloud in glee.
“Mother won’t be very nice about it,” he said presently, “but—”