And so he passed on. When he came to the cot where Rhett Bannister was lying, he gave him a word of simple greeting and would have gone by had not something in the man’s face attracted his attention and caused him to stop.
“Have I ever seen you before?” he inquired.
“Yes, Mr. President. I am Rhett Bannister from Pennsylvania. I spent a half-hour with you one morning in the Secretary’s room in the War Department, in the fall of ’63. I was an escaped conscript that morning.”
A smile of recognition lit up the face of the President, and his gnarled hand grasped the hand of the wounded man.
“I remember,” he said. “I remember very well. And have you been in the service ever since?”
Some one across the aisle, who had heard the conversation, replied that time for Bannister.
“Yes, Mr. President, he has. And he’s been the bravest and the best soldier in the ranks, bar none. I’m the adjutant of his battalion, and I know.”
“Good!” exclaimed the President. “Oh, that’s very good. I felt that we’d make a good soldier of him in the end. And, let’s see! There was a boy whose place you took. The boy went home.”
“No, Mr. President, he wouldn’t go, so we both stayed.”