"Much better than the average soldier. But that is not what I mean. You seem qualified for something better than the position you occupy. You are not of the material from which the army is usually recruited. This slip of paper, found beside the orderly bench at the office," observed the officer, handing the boy his sketch of the Trojan horse with the accompanying Latin sentence, "shows that you have been a student. I do not know what accident brought you here, but I think school is the proper place for you."
"Nothing would please me better, sir, than to be able to return to school; but it is not possible at present."
"Are you willing to tell me how you come to be in the service?"
"Yes, sir; it is not a long story," replied the young soldier. "My father and mother died when I was too young to remember them, and I was left to the care of a guardian, who sent me to school, and afterwards to an academy, where I prepared for college. I passed my entrance examination to the Freshman class in June, and expected to go on in September; but the failure of companies in which my property had been invested left me destitute, and I gave it up."
"But you have relatives?"
"Lots of them; but they showed little inclination to help me. There had been some family differences that I never understood, and I was too proud to go begging for assistance. I shipped on a granite-schooner for Philadelphia. I was miserably seasick the whole trip, and was discharged by the master of the vessel without pay. Having no money I could not find food while looking for work. I obtained an odd job now and then, but soon wore my clothes to rags, so that no respectable establishment would think of hiring me. I slept on the streets, and frequently passed a day without proper food. One day I passed a recruiting-office, and it suggested a means of escape from destitution. I enlisted as a fifer, and was assigned to your company."
"And you have been with me ten months," said the Captain. "I suppose your relatives cannot trace you?"
"They might trace me to Philadelphia," replied Reddy; "but the trail becomes dark there. Even if they suspected I had enlisted—which is not likely—they could not find me, for the recruiting sergeant blundered in registering my name. He put me down as Redmond A. Carter, when he should have written it Raymond J. Corser."
"Not a rare mistake of the recruiting officer. So you are of the General Corser family?"
"He was my grandfather."