"I told them I was eighteen. To-night I tried to prove I was as good as my word."
A smile went round the room. The general beamed.
"You answer well, sir, and you do well. Major Stark probably can't spare you or you should join my head-quarters' party and wear the chevrons of a sergeant. Look after this young gentleman, captain, and see that he has coffee and supper before he starts back," he said to one of his aides, who had been silently gazing at the orderly's face. "Your regiment's time expires next week. Perhaps you would like to come to me then. If so, there'll be a place for you, and meanwhile the home people will be proud when they read in Monday's papers how their boy captured the first rebel officer at Bull Run."
And with these words ringing in his ears, the lad was marched away to a shed outside where aides and officers of every rank were snatching a hurried bite from a camp-table, and here he was regaled with sandwiches and coffee, and plied with questions by men whose pencils sped like mad over their pads of paper, and they noted instantly his embarrassment when they asked him about home and parents.
"I have no home," he said, simply. "My father has been dead some years. My mother remarried. I've been making my own way, and that's all there is to it." But more they would have. His name, of course, was known. "George Lawton, private, Company 'C,' First New England, orderly to Major Stark," and at last the lad said his mother lived in Rhinebeck, her name was Park, and then he broke away in search of the young captain to whose care the general had committed him. There was something oddly familiar about that officer's face as he greeted Snipe again.
"Come in here," said he, leading the way within the hall, and thence to a little bedroom. Then he turned and faced the wondering lad. "Haven't I seen you at the Primes' in Fourteenth Street," said he, "and aren't you Regy Prime's—Shorty's—chum whom they called Snipe?"
There was no answer for a moment, but out came both the young captain's hands in cordial clasp. "Why, of course you are! I was sure I had seen your face before. I'm one of Pop's old boys myself, and there are more of them round here. Shorty's uncle isn't a mile away at this minute. Lots more of the tribe are somewhere with the army. Why, your teacher, Beach, is with General Wilcox. He was a classmate of mine, and we're all proud of you, Snipe. Now you've got to get back to your major to-night, and I suppose all of us will be fighting to-morrow. However, don't you forget what the general said. Come to him when your regiment goes home next week it you want to stay in service, and go on to Richmond with us."
Alas for soldier hope and projects! Long before the midnight hour came again all the general's army, some of it in mad panic, was rolling back on Washington. The Monday morning papers, indeed, gave thrilling account of the heroism of Private George Lawton in capturing at the risk of his life a daring young rebel officer of the famous Black Horse Cavalry. Then there were details of Lawton's prospective promotion, and of the general's complimentary remarks, and Monday morning's papers teemed, too, with tremendous tales of battle, and all Gotham cheered itself hoarse over the vivid reports of the annihilation of the rebel cavalry by the terrific fighters of the Fire Zouaves. But by noon came other tidings and a turn in the tide,—by afternoon details of fell disaster. "The Fire Zouaves annihilated by the cavalry!" was the way it read now. "Our splendid batteries swallowed up and gone." "Our army cut to pieces." Many generals, colonels, and captains killed. Hosts of gallant soldiers slain, and at last, when full reports—authentic reports—were published a long week later, among the wounded and missing were the names of Major James Stark and Corporal George Lawton, of the First New England, and Sergeant Keating, of the famous Fire Zouaves.
