It was the voice of the lieutenant. Lafe, proud of his plasters, opened his eyes and made out the young officer, propped up with a couple of straw pillows on the bed next his.
"My head aches a little, that's all," said Lafe. "Say, we had a squeak for it, didn't we?"
"I shan't forget it—nor you," responded the other.
"Cleveland's in Ohio, ain't it?" the boy asked, all at once pursuing a subject which had kept dodging in and out of his mind. "Perhaps you know an old man in one of the Ohio regiments—he must be getting along toward sixty—he's a lieutenant, and his name's Lyman Hornbeck. I was looking for him this afternoon when—when I lighted on you."
The young officer, quite heedless of his bandages, sat bolt upright and stared at Lafe as if too much amazed for words.
"I don't know what you're driving at," he said at last. "My name is Lyman Hornbeck, and I'm a Cleveland man and a lieutenant—but I'm a long way off from sixty. You can't mean my father? He's been dead two years. His name was Lyman. Why, hold on! General Boyce said something about Juno Mills—my father came from near there—you don't mean to say you're a Hornbeck?"
An irresistible impulse moved Lafe to crawl out of his bed and totter across to the other's pallet. He sat down on the edge of it, and leaned his head back on the officer's two pillows.
"Say, I'm Steve Hornbeck's son," he said, "and your father was my Uncle Lyme. Do you know, I kind of felt like takin' a shine to you when you spoke to me early this morning."
"I'm Steve Hornbeck's Son!"