That night, when he went to bed, a fresh train of thought commenced in connection with Wyatt, and he dwelt long upon his friend’s words, and the glimpse he had caught of what the man really was.
“I didn’t know,” thought Dick, as he dwelt long upon the sad page in the lieutenant’s history, “but I began to like him directly, and I believe he began to like me. He must, or he wouldn’t have been so friendly. It seems so strange, too, for we make a curious pair. I am right, though—big, brave man as he is, he is quite a boy at heart.”
Dick lay thinking then, his mind back upon the punishment, and the horror of being paraded out in the open space yonder to see that horrible flogging.
“Could I do anything to stop it?” he thought, and this kept him wakeful for another hour; while, when in the silence of the hot night he did drop asleep, it was to have the imaginary scene of the preparation for the punishment all before his eyes, while he looked on, saying to himself:
“Can’t I do something to stop all this?”
Chapter XVI.
A Special Pleader.
Dick woke up the next morning with the words at the end of the last chapter seeming to ring in his ears, just as if he had spoken them aloud.
There was early parade that morning, and some dashing evolutions were performed with wonderful accuracy, for his share in which Dick received some friendly words of praise from the captain.
“You promise to be a smart officer some day, Darrell,” he said. “Keep at it, and you’ll do.”