“But you’re ill,” said Stuart again. “And I don’t want to send an ill man on such a journey as this.”
Then Ham Seay rose in the majesty of his manhood.
“General,” he said, “I am a doomed man. I cannot live long to render service in the war. I want to render what service I can. I want to carry this message. It will do me no harm. It will not shorten the few days I have yet to live. It will make my life worth something.”
So Stuart gave him the message to a general fifty miles away.
Ham Seay mounted, and said to his comrades: “Good-by, boys. I may never see you again; but I’ll do this errand all right, or die trying.”
He rode his horse with urgency, but with discretion. He had but one object in view, and that was to get the message to its destination in the briefest possible number of hours.
He delivered his communication. He died half an hour afterwards. His horse had died before Ham did. But both had done their duty.
OLD JONES’S DASH
OLD Jones was a queer character. He was also a queer figure. He never had a uniform. He wore a yellow coat and a pair of light blue trousers. He wore a pot hat of the fashion, I should say at a guess, of the year 1812.
He was a graduate of West Point, but he had resigned from the army twelve years before the war began, and therefore was not entitled to what they called “relative rank.”