A Thoughtless Yes

by Helen H. Gardener

"He decided not to return home for the present.

"When he told his son this, the boy took it quite as a matter of course, and made no comment whatever on the sudden alteration of purpose.

"On the way back to camp George stepped into a military supply station and ordered fourteen hundred swords to be delivered to him immediately.

"By this time his father had made up his mind that there were short intervals in which the young colonel did not know exactly what he was doing—or, rather, that while he did know and act intelligently—from the outlook of the moment—it was a time wholly disconnected from the rest of his life, and when the moment was past he had no farther recollection of it.

"However, Mr. Wetherell was not sure enough of this to risk compromising a probably brilliant future by a premature or unnecessarily public announcement, and he therefore allowed the order to be made, and taken in good faith, and walked back to camp with his son, who immediately went about his duties in the most intelligent and scrupulously careful manner.

"Mr. Wetherell, however, made a call upon the officer in command the moment he could do so without attracting attention; and after a long talk (in which the secret sword order was discovered to be a delusion), it was decided that the recently recovered invalid should retire from the field on the sick leave, which he had previously refused to consider.

"When he was told of this arrangement, he agreed to it without a murmur, and began, for the first time for many days, to have his wounds (which were now past the need of it) dressed with much care. This he continued every morning, but by the time they reached home he had become possessed with the belief that his chief wound was in his side, where there had not been a scratch.

"To humor him, the family physician applied bandages to the imaginary injury every day regularly.

"All this time there was no clearer talker, no more acute reasoner, no more simple, earnest, gentlemanly fellow to be found than Col. George Wetherell, whom his townsmen were honoring and inducing to make public speeches and write clear, firm, inspiring editorials for one of the leading papers. No one except his own family and physician suspected for a moment that he was not mentally as bright as he always had been, and even the younger members of the family were without the least hint of it.

"Indeed, his father and the doctor both thought that his only illusion now was a belief in the wound in his side. Several weeks passed, and even this indication was losing its force, for he no longer required medical attention, and was as well and as rational as ever in his life, so far as any one could perceive, when one day a stranger appeared and asked for him. Mr. Wetherell requested the gentleman (who was evidently laboring under great excitement) to be seated, and at the same time made up his own mind to be present during the interview.