We had our hands full of business making ready for the march, when Reuben Cox came shyly up to where Sergeant Corney and I were looking after the stowage of goods in the wagons, and said to me in a half-whisper, as if fearing others might hear him:
"I don't reckon your company is any place for a man who has shown himself sich a sneak as I am, eh?"
"Would you like to go with us?" I asked, in surprise, and pitying from the bottom of my heart the man who was so deeply repentant.
"That I would, Captain Campbell. It may be in time I can live down my record, providin' there be any one who'll look to what I may do, instead of always thinkin' of what I have done."
"But the men in the fort have been kind to you of late, Cox?" I said, questioningly.
"Ay, that they have, considerin' what I've done, an' how nearly I came to workin' the worst of harm to all hands here; but I can see by their eyes that they're always thinkin' I may play the same dirty game agin, though God knows I'd stand at the stake with never a whimper till the life was burned out of me rather than do one of them another wrong."
Had I felt at liberty to decide the matter then and there, Cox would have been a member of the Minute Boys without further parley; but it was only right I should consult the others, therefore I told him to come again within an hour, when I would give him an answer.
He thanked me humbly, and was about to go away, when Sergeant Corney took him by the hand as he said:
"What's in the past can't be brought back for the fixin'; but we've got in our own keepin' the shapin' of the to-morrows. I'm thinkin' you won't go astray agin, Reuben Cox, an' whenever I see a chance to speak a good word for you it shall be said."
The man's face lighted up wonderfully, and in my heart I thanked the old sergeant over and over for having been thus kind to one who, having committed the worst crime possible for a soldier, stood ready to give up his life cheerfully to the end that he might atone.