“The boy wouldn’t go home? What became of him?”
“He’s here, Mr. President, on the next cot. We were both clipped at Five Forks.”
The President turned half round and looked incredulously on the pale face of the youth at his side. Then he took the boy’s two hands in both of his, and bent over him. There was no grace in the movement, there was no beauty of face or smoothness of diction to add charm to the incident; but Bob Bannister will remember to his last hour on earth how the great War President leaned over him and spoke.
[“My boy, of such stuff are patriots and heroes made.”]
Then, glancing at the wall where Bob’s frayed and dusty coat hung at the head of his cot, with the shoulder-straps of a first lieutenant half showing, he said, inquiringly:—
“That coat’s not yours?”
“It is mine, Mr. President.”
Lincoln looked down again at the boyish face beneath him.
“It’s hard to believe,” he said.