"You have done well, Lieutenant Kenton," said Beauregard, "and now you can rejoin your regiment. You are to receive a promotion of one grade."
Harry was glad to leave the marquee and hurry toward the camp of the Invincibles. The first of his friends whom he saw was Happy Tom Langdon, bathing his face in a little stream that flowed into Young's Branch. He walked up and smote him joyously on the back. Langdon sprang to his feet in anger and exclaimed:
"Hey, you fellow, what do you mean by that?"
He saw before him a tall, gawky youth in ill-fitting clothes, his face a mask of dust. But this same dusty youth grinned and replied:
"I hit you once, and if you don't speak to me more politely I'll hit you twice."
Langdon stared. Then recognition came.
"Harry Kenton, by all that's wonderful!" he exclaimed. "And so you've come back! I was afraid you never would! What have you been doing, Harry?"
"I've been pretty busy. I drove in the right wing of the Yankee army, put to flight a couple of brigades in their center, then I went on to Washington and had a talk with Lincoln. I told him the North would have me to reckon with if he kept on with this war, but he said he believed he'd go ahead anyhow. I even mentioned your name to him, but the menace did no good."
Langdon called to St. Clair and soon Harry was surrounded by friends who gave him the warmest of greetings and who insisted upon the tale of his adventures, a part of which he was free to tell. Then a new uniform was brought to him, and, after a long and refreshing bath in a deep pool of the stream, he put it on. He felt now as if he had been entirely made over, and, as he strolled back to camp, a tall, thin man, black of hair and pallid of face, hailed him.
Harry took two glances before he recognized Arthur Travers in the Southern uniform. Then he grasped his hand eagerly and asked him when he had come.