“I--I apologize, sir,” he said contritely, “for appearing in your presence wearing a commissioned officer’s sword.”
“I lost my revolver. The sword was--was given me for self-defense at a house where I hid when guerrillas were after me. I used it in getting away again; then stuck it in my belt in case I should be attacked in close quarters at some time during the night.”
“You need not apologize to me or to anyone,” said Hooker slowly, “from this time on, for wearing a commissioned officer’s sword. Your commission as first lieutenant of infantry will be signed by President Lincoln as soon as my next courier goes to him. In the meantime you are an acting-lieutenant.
“Keep the sword. I wish all newly commissioned officers had as good a right to one as you have just shown yourself to possess.”
Dad’s head swam. He tried to stammer out halting phrases of gratitude. Hooker cut him short with another brusk laugh.
“If we played a trick and you were chosen as the catspaw,” said he, “you’ll at least bear witness that I know how to reward a catspaw whose claws are as alert as yours. Go across to the staff mess and get some breakfast. Then take a few hours of sleep. You look as if you could make use of it.”
Dad saluted with the sword he had drawn and turned to go. Hooker recalled him as he reached the threshold of the tent door.
“Lieutenant Dadd,” he said inquisitively, “do you chance to have been at the Point?”
“You will not find the name, ‘James Dadd,’ on any army list, I am afraid, sir,” answered the new-made lieutenant, shaking inwardly.
“H’m!” mused Hooker. “Probably not. Probably not. It’s no affair of mine or of anyone’s. But don’t deny it too strenuously to other people who may ask you--or, rather, if you don’t want them to ask you, don’t draw a sword and salute with it as if you had handled such weapons for years.
“Infantry privates do not carry swords. And when they are first promoted, they don’t handle them as you do. That is all. Good-by, Lieutenant--Dadd.”
A boggy, tree-strewn stretch of lowlands where whitish mists hung thick at dawn and whence miasma vapors rose under the broiling sun of midday.
A delightful place for duck and quail shooting in midwinter. In summer a rank plague spot--and incidentally, on this particular summer of 1862, the camping ground of the army of the Potomac. The malarial region whose name, even to-day, sends a shudder along the bent spine of many an oldster.