“Mr. Warner,” said Sergeant Whitley.
“So it is,” exclaimed Dick. “It's really good old George come to help us!”
He rushed forward and shook hands with Warner who although thin and pale was as cool and apparently almost as strong as ever.
“Here I am, Dick,” he said, “and the great battle hasn't been fought. I knew they couldn't fight it without me. The hospital at Washington dismissed me in disgrace because I got well so fast. 'What's the use,' said one of the doctors, 'in getting up and running away to the army to get killed? You could die much more comfortably here in bed.' 'Not at all,' I replied. 'I don't get killed when I'm with the army. I merely get nearly killed. Then I lie unconscious on the field, in the rain, until some good friend comes along, takes me away on his back and puts me in a warm bed. It's a lot safer than staying in your hospital all the time.'”
“Oh, shut up, George! Come and see the boys. They'll be glad to know you're back—what's left of 'em.”
Warner's welcome was in truth warm. He seemed more phlegmatic than ever, but he opened his eyes wide when they told him of the dispatch that had been lost and found.
“General McClellan must have been waiting for me,” he said. “Tell him I've come.”
But General McClellan did not yet move. The last long hour of the day passed. The sun set in red and gold behind the western mountains, and the Army of the Potomac still rested in its camp, although privates even knew that precious hours were being lost, and that booming cannon might already be telling the defenders of Harper's Ferry that Jackson was at hand.
Nor were they far wrong. While McClellan lingered on through the night, never moving from his camp, Jackson and his generals were pushing forward with fiery energy and at dawn the next day had surrounded Harper's Ferry and its doomed garrison of more than twelve thousand men.
But these were things that Dick could not guess that night. One small detachment had been sent ahead by McClellan, chiefly for scouting purposes, and in the darkness the boy who had gone a little distance forward with Colonel Winchester heard the booming of cannon. It was a faint sound but unmistakable, and Dick glanced at his chief.