As the Deacon pondered over the matter in the early morning hours, he saw that his only chance of getting the horse back was to start with him before daylight revealed him to the men in camp.
"I'll drive him well outside our lines, and as near to the house as I think it prudent to go, and then turn him loose," he said to himself. "If he's got the sense o' the horses up North he'll go straight home, and then my conscience will be clear. If he don't, I'll have done all I could. The Lord don't ask unreasonable things of us, even in atonement."
So he cooked as good a breakfast for the boys as he could prepare from his materials, woke up Shorty and put him in charge, and an hour before daybreak turned the horse's head toward the pontoon bridge, and started him on a lively trot.
He had only fairly started when a stern voice called out to him from a large tent:
"Here, you, stop that trotting. What do you mean? Don't you know that it's strictly against orders to trot horses in their present condition?"
"Excuse me. Captain," said the Deacon. "I"
"Blank your Captain," roared the voice; "I'm no Captain."
"Major," said the Deacon deprecatingly.