The old chaplain stuck his pipe into his mouth and brought it aflare again with two or three strong indrawing respirations.
“The surgeons said it would end in a case of dementia. I was sorry, for I had seen much that day that hurt me, and more than all was this. For I could picture that valiant young spirit going through life, spared by God's mercy; and it seemed to me that when the enemy, in whatever guise, should press him hard and defeat should bear him down he would have the courage and the ardor and the moral strength to rally on the reserve. He would rally on the guidon.”
The old chaplain pulled strongly at his pipe, setting the blue wreaths of smoke circling about his head. “I should know that young fellow again wherever I might chance to see him.”
“Did he collapse at last and verify the surgeon's prophecy!” asked the dealer.
“Well,” drawled the chaplain, with a little flattered laugh, “I myself took care of that Many years ago I studied medicine, before I was favored with a higher call. Neurology was my line. When the boy's horse sank exhausted beneath him, and he fell into a sleep or stupor on the carcass, I removed the object of the obsession. I slipped the flag-staff, guidon and all, into a crevice of the rocks, where it will remain till the end of our time, be sure.” He laughed in relish of his arbitrary intervention.
“There was a fine healthy clamor in camp the next morning about the lost guidon. But I did the soldier no damage, for he had been promoted to a lieutenancy for special gallantry on the field, and he therefore could no longer have carried the guidon if he had had both the flag and the troop.”
The stories of camp and field, thus begun, swiftly multiplied; they wore the fire to embers, and the oil sank low in the lamps. There was a chill sense of dawn in the blue-gray mist when the group, separating at last, issued upon the veranda; the moon, so long hovering over the sombre massive mountains, was slowly sinking in the west.
Among the shadows of the pillars a tall, martial figure lurked in ambush for the old chaplain, as he rounded the corner of the veranda on his way to his own quarters.
“Pa'son,” a husky voice spoke from out the dim comminglement of the mist and the moon, “'twas me that carried that guidon in Dovinger 's Bangers.”
“I know it,” declared the triumphant tactician. “I recognized you as soon as I saw you again.”