"I did; that's what brought me out of the house. But what does he mean by threatening you?"
"I have no idea, sir; or, rather, I have an idea, but the matter is of no consequence whatever, and only characteristic of the man. He is a scoundrel, I suspect, and I wonder that Hollins has kept him so long."
"Do you know that Hollins hasn't turned up yet?"
"So I heard this morning, colonel, and yet you saw him the night of the battle, did you not?"
"Not the night after, but the night before. We left him with the wagons when we marched to the ford. I was knocked off my horse about one in the afternoon, just north of the cornfield, and they got me back to the wagons with this left shoulder all out of shape—collar-bone broken; and he wasn't there then, and hadn't been seen since daybreak. Somebody said he was so cut up when you were hit at the Gap. I didn't know you were such friends."
"Well, we've known each other a long time—were together at Harvard and moved in the same set; but there was never any intimacy, colonel."
"I see, I see," says the older officer, reflectively. "He was a stranger to me when I joined the regiment and found him quartermaster. He was Colonel Raymond's choice, and you know that in succeeding to his place I preferred to make no changes. But I say to you now that I wish I had. Hollins has failed to come up to the standard as a campaign quartermaster, and the men have suffered through his neglect more than once. Then he stayed behind when we marched through Washington—a thing he never satisfactorily explained to me—and I had serious thoughts of relieving him at Frederick and appointing you to act in his stead. Now the fortune of war has settled both questions. Hollins is missing, and you are a captain or will be within the month. Have you heard from Wendell?"
"His arm is gone, sir; amputated above the elbow; and he has decided to resign. Foster commands the company, but I shall go forward just as soon as the doctor will let me."
"We'll go together. He says I can stand the ride in ten days or two weeks, but neither of your wounds has healed yet. How's the leg? That must have been a narrow squeak."
"No bones were touched, sir. It was only that I lost so much blood from the two. It was the major who reported me to you as dangerously wounded, was it not?"