“I have since learned it, sir.”
“I understand that he afterward enlisted and is now at the front. Is that true?”
“I believe it is.”
“How is it that so unpatriotic a father can have so patriotic a son?”
“I hold myself to be as much of a patriot, sir, as any man in this state. The boy and I take different views of the same matter, that is all. He is young, barely seventeen, and easily influenced by professions of loyalty and the glitter of arms. He has no business to be in the ranks. His place is at home with his mother. I am willing, I desire, to be substituted for him.”
“I see. The scheme is a pretty one, but we cannot permit you to purchase immunity from punishment in that way. Neither your son’s age, nor his patriotism, nor his bravery can serve to effect your release. You have the standing only of a deserter, you must be dealt with as such. I shall remand you to the officers of the division and regiment to which, as a drafted man, you were assigned. They may shoot you, or hang you, or do what they will with you. I am through with you. In my judgment no power on earth can save you from the extreme penalty meted out to deserters unless it be Abraham Lincoln himself. At any rate, I do not want you longer on Pennsylvania soil. Remove the prisoner.”
No wonder Rhett Bannister received little sympathy or consideration at the hands of his captors after that condemnation. Between two soldiers under orders to deliver him to the commander of the regiment to which he had been assigned, he was hustled and hurried on board train, and so off toward Washington.
The soldier guard, at the first opportunity, purchased a pack of cards and a bottle of whiskey. At the station where the next change of cars was made another bottle of whiskey was obtained. The smoking-car in which they sat, and up and down the aisle of which they reeled, was filled with the noise of their harsh orders, their rude quarreling with each other, and their coarse jests at the expense of their prisoner. To Rhett Bannister it was a bitter, a humiliating, a degrading night. But long before the train rolled into the station at Washington, both drunken soldiers had fallen into a heavy sleep. Nor did they awaken when the brakeman announced the station and cried, “All out!”
The few passengers remaining in the car rose to leave. Bannister rose with them. Not so much because he desired to escape from the custody of the Federal authorities, as because he wished to relieve himself of the odious and repellent society of his drunken and disreputable guards.
One man, looking at him askance, said:—