“[Well],” he said, “[what’s your case?]”
“I haven’t any case,” replied Bob, “except that I want to enlist in place of my father, who has been drafted.”
“Go as a substitute, eh? Well, you want to see Lieutenant Morrison about that, in the next room. Your father is here, I suppose,” he added, as Bob turned away.
“No,” replied Bob, “he isn’t. That’s the trouble. Nor does he know I’m here.”
The captain laid down his pen and looked at the boy curiously.
“That’s strange,” he said. “What’s the reason he don’t know?”
Bob advanced a step closer to the marshal’s table.
“Well, he isn’t in sympathy with the war. And when he was drafted he wouldn’t report. And when the soldiers came to arrest him he—they couldn’t find him.”