“Courier! Dispatches!” snapped Jimmie, and forestalled further argument or delay by ducking nimbly under the soldier’s arm and scampering for the porch. “Courier! Dispatches!” he repeated grandiloquently to the veranda’s occupants at large as he climbed the steps. “Where’s General McClellan?” A gorgeous staff officer bustled forward, stepping officiously between the boy and the open front door of the house. “Dispatches?” echoed the officer. “Give them here.” “Not much I won’t!” retorted Jimmie. “These are for General McClellan. They aren’t for anyone else.” “I am General McClellan’s acting secretary,” the officer announced harshly, his dignity rasped by a laugh from fellow officers lounging near by. The spectacle of a small boy in a big uniform, caked with dust and horse-foam, defying the pompous acting secretary was one of mild joy to everyone. “I am General McClellan’s acting secretary,” repeated the officer impatiently. “I will take--” “I wouldn’t care if you was his maiden aunt,” declared Jimmie stoutly. “Dad told me to give a paper to General McClellan himself. He didn’t say anything about giving it to anyone else--even if the someone else happened to be wearing seven diff’rent kinds of gold lace. And what Dad tells me to do goes. Where’s General McClellan?” “Who’s ‘Dad,’ sonny?” laughed a colonel who was sprawling in the sun on the steps. “He’s my s’perior off’cer,” returned Jimmie. “And he told me to--” “Here!” snorted the secretary. “If you’ve got any papers, you little ragamuffin, give them to me. If you haven’t, be off, or I’ll take my riding-switch to you. I--” “Look!” gasped Jimmie melodramatically, pointing a trembling, stubby forefinger over the secretary’s shoulder. The secretary involuntarily turned. Jimmie on the instant darted past him through the door and into the hallway beyond. The dimmer light half-blinded the boy, coming as he did from the glare of the street. But he dared not pause. Vaguely, half-way down the long hallway, he saw a sentinel posted in front of one of several closed doors. Jimmie needed no further directions. He made for that door. And the sentinel, who had beheld the scene on the porch, made for Jimmie. The boy halted and attempted to dodge. Out went the sentry’s arms to seize him. And, with a sudden lunge forward, crash went Jimmie’s bullet-head into the pit of the soldier’s stomach. The sentinel doubled up in pain. But as he did so he managed to seize the boy by the coat-collar. Wriggling eel-like from the too loose garment, Jimmie leaped at the closed door, flung it open, rushed into the room beyond and slammed the door shut again behind him. Two men were talking earnestly in an embrasure by a window. One of them Jimmie recognized at once as General Hooker whom Dad had pointed out to him a few days earlier. The shorter and stockier man he also recognized from a hundred photographs he had seen.