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Page 34
"You leave out a fine point, to my mind, Captain Booth," the Colonel
said quickly. "About his going back."
"Oh! certainly that ought to be told," said the Captain, and the
General's eyes turned to him again. "Morgan forgot to see young Blue
Arrow, his friend, before he got away, and nothing would do but that he
should go back and speak to him. He said the boy would be disappointed.
The men were visibly uneasy at his going, but that didn't affect him. He
ordered them to wait, and back he went, pell-mell, all alone into that
horde of fiends. They hadn't got over their funk, luckily, and he saw
Blue Arrow and made his party call and got out again all right. He
didn't tell that himself, but Sergeant O'Hara made the camp ring with
it. He adores Morgan, and claims that he doesn't know what fear is. I
believe it's about so. I've seen him in a fight three times now. His cap
always goes off--he loses a cap every blessed scrimmage--and with that
yellow mop of hair, and a sort of rapt expression he gets, he looks like
a child saying its prayers all the time he is slashing and shooting like
a berserker." Captain Booth faced abruptly toward the Colonel. "I beg
your pardon for talking so long, sir," he said. "You know we're all
rather keen about little Miles Morgan."
The General lifted his head suddenly. "Miles Morgan?" he demanded. "Is
his name Miles Morgan."
The Colonel nodded. "Yes. The grandson of the old Bishop--named for
him."
"Lord!" ejaculated the General. "Miles Morgan was my earliest friend, my
friend until he died! This must be Jim's son--Miles's only child. And
Jim is dead these ten years," he went on rapidly. "I've lost track of
him since the Bishop died, but I knew Jim left children. Why, he
married"--he searched rapidly in his memory--"he married a daughter of
General Fitzbrian's. This boy's got the church and the army both in him.
I knew his mother," he went on, talking to the Colonel, garrulous with
interest. "Irish and fascinating she was--believed in fairies and ghosts
and all that, as her father did before her. A clever woman, but with the
superstitious, wild Irish blood strong in her. Good Lord! I wish I'd
known that was Miles Morgan's grandson."
The Colonel's voice sounded quiet and rather cold after the General's
impulsive enthusiasm. "You have summed him up by his antecedents,
General," he said. "The church and the army--both strains are strong. He
is deeply religious."
The General looked thoughtful. "Religious, eh? And popular? They don't
always go together."
Captain Booth spoke quickly. "It's not that kind, General," he said.
"There's no cant in the boy. He's more popular for it--that's often so
with the genuine thing, isn't it? I sometimes think"--the young
Captain hesitated and smiled a trifle deprecatingly--"that Morgan is
much of the same stuff as Gordon--Chinese Gordon; the martyr stuff, you
know. But it seems a bit rash to compare an every-day American youngster
to an inspired hero."
"There's nothing in Americanism to prevent either inspiration or heroism
that I know of," the General affirmed stoutly, his fine old head up, his
eyes gleaming with pride of his profession.
Out through the open doorway, beyond the slapping tent-flap, the keen,
gray eyes of the Colonel were fixed musingly on two black points which
crawled along the edge of the dulled silver of the distant river--Miles
Morgan and Sergeant O'Hara had started.
* * * * *
"Sergeant!" They were eight miles out now, and the camp had disappeared
behind the elbow of Black Wind Mountain. "There's something wrong with
your horse. Listen! He's not loping evenly." The soft cadence of eight
hoofs on earth had somewhere a lighter and then a heavier note; the ear
of a good horseman tells in a minute, as a musician's ear at a false
note, when an animal saves one foot ever so slightly, to come down
harder on another.
"Yessirr. The Lieutenant'll remimber 'tis the horrse that had a bit of a
spavin, Sure I thot 'twas cured, and 'tis the kindest baste in the
rigiment f'r a pleasure ride, sorr--that willin' 'tis. So I tuk it. I
think 'tis only the stiffness at furrst aff. 'Twill wurruk aff later.
Plaze God, I'll wallop him." And the Sergeant walloped with a will.
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