Hooker put a big, kindly hand almost in caress on the boy’s heaving shoulder.
“There, lad!” he said in rough gentleness. “Don’t waste all your good powder blazing into the air. There’s no more danger of your Dad being kicked out of the army than of Jeff Davis becoming President of the United States.
“We all know the story. And we all honor him. Even President Lincoln knows it. And by this time to-morrow President Lincoln will know what Dad has done for the Union to-day in getting that paper to us.
“Now trot along. The paper you brought here is going to keep every general and every courier in the Army of the Potomac busy all day and all night. There’s no time to waste on boys. Not even on Battle Jimmies. Clear out and run along!”
He gave the boy a friendly shove toward the door. As Jimmie, dazed but infinitely relieved, passed out he saw the two generals, wholly oblivious of him, bending once more over the paper.
Into Frederick rode Dad, astride the erstwhile runaway.
Since passing the Union outposts he had let the tired horse take its own gait. At his heels trotted Emp. There was no hurry. And Dad was tired.
From the sentry at the outposts whom he questioned he had learned of Jimmie’s whirlwind passage down the road, and at the head of the main street of Frederick another query to a goober-vender elicited the fact that Jimmie had entered the town at a gallop nearly an hour earlier.
Satisfied thus in his mind as to the safety of his grandson and of the paper’s delivery to McClellan, he slowed his weary mount to a walk and turned into a bystreet which formed a shorter route toward the Federal camps.
It was a pretty lane into which he turned. Wide-branched trees met above its winding center. Golden glow and asters and phlox bordered the little gardens along either side.
A plump gray kitten in the middle of the byway was valorously stalking a covey of sparrows that flew away in bored annoyance as she crept near.
Emp proceeded to pursue the pursuer, who, after scratching his nose with unnecessary virulence, ran up a tree.
Emp returned sulky, yet relieved, to his post at the horse’s heels. The lane was deserted of traffic. Somewhere in the arched trees above a late-season mocking-bird was piping its clamorous sweet call.