Late that night, as G. W. lay upon his camp-bed (for he had been promoted from the humble mattress) in the dismantled tent, Colonel Austin entered. He was very weary, very pale. The boy upon the bed watched him silently. The moonlight was streaming in the opening, and the tall figure was distinctly outlined as the Colonel paused within the doorway and glanced about the bare, disordered place. All at once he seemed to understand; a smile flitted across his worn face. He went over to the soapbox table, shorn of its gorgeous cover, the photograph alone adorning it. He took the picture, looked long and tenderly at the two faces, then slipping the card out of the frame he put it in his breast pocket.
A moment later he came over to G. W.'s bed. The boy looked up trustingly.
"I'se awake, Colonel."
"Good for you, comrade. I want to have a little talk with you."
A thin brown little hand slipped itself into the large firm one, and G. W. sat up.
"G. W.," said the Colonel, "I'm going to the front. You know what that means?"
"I 'low I does, Colonel. When does we start? I'se been a-workin' ter get ready."
"But, comrade, you are not to go!" The poor little body-guard had feared this. In his misery he looked up into the Colonel's face and gulped helplessly.
"Don't take it that way, my child," said the Colonel, smoothing the little woolly head burrowing back in the pillow; "it would be impossible for me to take a little fellow like you along. There's just a chance, you know, G. W., that I may not get back. I've thought lately that I did wrong to bring you from Tampa; but you had nothing there, and we have had each other here, comrade, and that ought to count for something."
A tightening of the little hand replied.