To his wife he added:—
“I start to-morrow morning to try to reach Robert. The probability is that I shall not succeed. But the least I can do is to make the effort.”
Then, gently, calmly, carefully, he outlined to his wife the plan that he had in mind, and explained to her why there was nothing left for him to do but to try to reach and save the boy. The effort might cost him his life, but to stay at home was likely also to cost him his life, and to attempt to escape from the Federal authorities was utterly useless. There was a wild possibility, the thousandth part of a chance, that he might get to Bob and be able to take the boy’s place in the ranks. That was all. And when it was all said, he did not find her nerveless, or hysterical, or in tears, as he had expected and feared, but, instead, in her eyes there was a look of resolution and bravery, across her gentle lips there was drawn a line of courage and determination such as, in all their married life, he had never seen there before.
“I am content,” she said. “I believe you are doing right. Rhett, dear, no matter what happens now, come life or death or desolation, I shall have two heroes to worship and dream of as long as I live.”
Strange it is, and divine, that in a woman so weak so strong a spirit will develop when the right hour strikes.
So, in the bleak darkness of the next morning, at the same hour on which his son had left home scarcely a week before, Rhett Bannister kissed his wife and his sleeping child good-by, and set forth on a mission which, even in his most hopeful moments, promised him only bitter and disastrous failure.
Up the dark road, in the face of the chill October wind, he hurried, into the streets of Mount Hermon, past the home of Sarah Jane Stark, making the same détour around the village that Bob had made, coming out into the main road where he had come, hurrying on in the gray light of the morning, toward his hoped-for destination. But, farther on, he left the main highway and struck off across the country by a little-traveled road, expecting to reach a way station on the railroad a few miles beyond Carbon Creek, and there meet the morning train.
In this effort he was successful. He met no one on the way, nor did any one at the station recognize him. But he had no sooner boarded the train than that happened which he might have expected. Soldiers in uniform arose mysteriously and one stood guard at each door of the car, and another one, followed by an officer, came down the aisle and stopped at the conscript’s seat.
“Is your name Bannister?” inquired the officer.
“It is,” responded the man. “Rhett Bannister of Mount Hermon, at your service; drafted by the government, classed as a deserter, and on my way to join the Army of the Potomac in Virginia.”