“And now,” added Jack, “we are going to hide with you a week or so, until Captain Tom can lay his plans.”
“Thank God—thank God!”—said Uncle Bisco, and he would feel of his young master and say: “Jes' lak he allus wus, only his hair is a leetle gray. An' in the same uniform he rid off in—the same gran' clothes.”
Captain Tom laughed: “No, not the same, but like them. You see, I reported at Washington and explained it to the Secretary of War, Jack. It seems that Mr. Lincoln had been kind enough to write a personal letter about me to my grandfather,—they were old friends. It was a peculiar scene—my interview with the Secretary. My grandfather had filed this letter at the War Department before he died, and my return to life was a matter of interest and wonder to them. And so I am still Captain of Artillery,” he smiled.
In the little cabin the old servants gave him the best room, cleanly and sweet with an old-fashioned feather-bed and counterpane. Jack Bracken had a cot by his bed, and on the wall was a picture of Miss Alice.
Long into the night they talked, the young man asking them many questions and chief of all, of Alice. They could see that he was thinking of her, and often he would stop before the picture and look at it and fall into a reverie.
“It seems to me but yesterday,” he said, “since I left her and went off to the war. She is not to know that I am here—not yet. You must hide me if she runs in,” he smiled. “I must see her first in my own way.”
He noticed Jack Bracken's cot by his bedside and smiled.
“You see, I have been takin' keer of you so long,” said Jack after the old servants had left them to themselves, “that I can't git out of the habit. I thought you wus never comin' home.”
“It's good we came when we did, Jack.”
“You ought to have let me shoot.”