"Not more than that."
"Well, that's Levi; that's Levi, all right," broke in Dennis. "Just bring him here to me, and I'll make him forgit his fingers and his pinsions."
"You may make him forget his fingers, but you never can make him forget his pensions," laughed the chaplain. "That seemed to be the chief thing in his mind. I think I'll try to find out if his name is Levi Kadoff."
"If it is," suggested Noel, "bring the fellow here, but don't tell him what you are bringing him for or that we are here."
"I'll see what I can do," said the chaplain, and a moment later he departed from the tent.
The fact that the kind-hearted officer had made three visits that day to the boys showed his interest in their welfare, but somehow Noel was unable to shake off his conviction that their friend was powerless to aid them. Accordingly he was surprised when an hour afterward the chaplain returned.
"No word yet," he said quietly, as he smiled and shook his head, "but I have some other good news for you. You understand there is nothing to back up the statement which you have made that you were sharpshooters in the Peninsula campaign. Personally, I believe what you tell me. I have at last secured permission for you both to go with an orderly and four men to a place outside the camp where you may show what skill you possess."
"That's the way to talk," spoke up Dennis quickly. His hope had now returned with full force. Indeed, as he afterward explained, he looked upon their discharge as already having been accomplished.
To Noel, however, the privilege was not one which was unmixed with anxiety. In his own skill, in his quiet way, he felt confident, but to make such skill a test of the truth of what he had spoken was another matter. A gun with which he was unfamiliar would be thrust into his hands and the very excitement of the test of itself might be sufficient to prevent him from doing himself full justice.
The chaplain, aware of what was passing in the mind of the young soldier, smiled encouragingly and did not speak.