“Yes. I’ve thought it all out. You know my father. You know what he thinks about the war and about the draft. You know he’s been drafted and won’t go, and says the soldiers can’t take him alive. Well, Sergeant Anderson said that, defying the draft that way, he’s classed as a deserter, and when he’s caught he’s liable to be shot. Now you know that isn’t a nice thing to happen to your father. So I’ve decided to do this. I’m going to Easton to see this provost-marshal and offer to take my father’s place as a drafted man, and go wherever they choose to send me, provided they’ll let him off. I think they will, don’t you?”
For a moment the old man did not answer. He seemed to be trying fully to comprehend the situation. Then, suddenly, he took it in. Rising to his feet as quickly as his rheumatic legs would let him, kicking over his three-legged milking-stool in the operation, and barely saving his pail of milk from the same fate, he grasped Bob heartily by the hand.
“Jest the thing!” he exclaimed, “jest the thing! Here I’ve been layin’ awake nights fur a week tryin’ to think up some way o’ savin’ Rhett Bannister’s neck, an’ here you’ve gone an’ struck it the first time, by cracky!”
“You think the plan’s all right, do you, Uncle Seth?”
“Sound as a dollar, my boy, sound as a dollar. They’ll take ye an’ glad to git ye. To be sure, you’re a leetle mite under age, but that won’t make no difference; you’re big an’ strong, an’ you can carry a gun an’ fight with the best of ’em.”
“But, will they let father off?”
“Well, now I sh’d think they would. They don’t want no copperheads in the army, nor no deserters, nor—why, I sh’d think they’d be tickled to death to swap him for you, an’ call good riddance to him. That’s what I say.”
“It looks that way to me, too, Uncle Seth, and I do want to help father and save him if I can.”
“Yes, an’ they’s another thing about it, Robbie. S’posin’ ye git to go down there. S’posin’ ye git to be one of Uncle Sam’s soldiers a-fightin’ in the army. You think your father’s goin’ to set down to hum contented, an’ let his boy do the soldierin’? No, sir-ee! that ain’t him. You mark my words. In less’n ten days he’ll be down there a-tryin’ to git to take your place stid o’ your takin’ his’n. That’s what I say. Now, you mark my words!”
But Bob did not quite believe that. The most that he hoped to do was to relieve his father from the effect of the draft and the result of his disobedience to it. More than that, of course, it would give him the opportunity that he had longed for and waited for, to fight for his country and his country’s flag.