"McClellan's the boy!" broke out a voice.
"You are right—'Little Mac's' the boy!" said the Captain. "He wants us all. The doctor told me this morning that I might go back, and I am going to-morrow."
"The doctor?—then you have been sick or wounded! What a fool I have been making of myself!" said the first speaker, generous as rough.
"A little!" answered the Captain, and by a dexterous movement he flung back his coat, threw open his collar and bared his neck almost to the shoulder. The whole top of the shoulder seemed to have been shot away, and the blade broken, by a ball that had struck him there and ploughed through into the neck; and the yet imperfectly healed flesh lay in torn ridges of ghastly disfigurement. Thousands of men have died from wounds of not half the apparent consequence; and yet the wearer of this was the smiling and even-tempered man of the new uniform—going back to-morrow! The world has not lost all its heroes yet; and some of them have the same fancy for a clean shirt and spotless broadcloth, when attainable, as Murat displayed for a velvet cloak, or white plume and plenty of gold embroidery on his trousers, when making the most reckless of charges at the head of the most dashing cavalry in the world. "That," said the Captain, closing up the wound as rapidly as he had opened it, but not before a general shudder had run through the crowd at its ghastly character—"that I got at Fair Oaks, three weeks ago last Sunday. How do you like it? Am I going back soon enough? Good morning, boys!"
"And your name?" asked the man who had stopped him, as he attempted to pass on. "Who are you?—Do tell us."
"Nobody that you would know," said the Captain. "My name is D——, and I belong to the Sickles Brigade."
He passed on, hurriedly, down Beekman Street, as if "Little Mac" had sent for him and he had been wasting time in going; but the cheer that went after him was joined in by the invalids at the Park fence, who had caught a part of the dialogue; and the people in the "World" office looked up from their account books, wondering what was the matter in the street; while the politicians in front of Crook and Duff's, among whom were some of the City Fathers and their backers and bottle-holders, losing the other part of the affair and only hearing the shouts, wondered whether some new notability had not just arrived at the Astor House, who could be turned to profitable use in the way of a reception in the Governor's Room, a few "Committees," gloves, carriages from Van Ranst and a dinner or two all around—of course at the expense of the economically-managed city treasury.
And this closes a chapter which has made no direct progress whatever in following the leading characters of this story, who must now be again taken up in their order.