“I was certain you would,” nodded the general. “I made the request as a technicality. I warn you, sergeant, that the chances of capture are at least ten to one against you. That is why I wish you to go in uniform. It may lessen your prospects of success, but in the event of capture you will be a prisoner of war and not hanged.” Dad looked more keenly at the speaker. This general of his had not the reputation of nursing carefully his men’s lives, nor of placing those lives ahead of successful achievement. Dad wondered a little at the man’s unusual consideration. But quickly he dismissed the problem as not only too deep for him, but as immaterial. He was eager to be off upon this hazardous venture. He knew the country. He knew his route, and he was anxious to pit his brains and his luck against whatever foes might infest the intervening districts. “You ride?” asked the general. “Yes, sir.” “You will gain time that way. The risk is greater, but so is the speed. Go to your quarters and get ready. I will order a fast horse sent there to you in five minutes. Start at once when it arrives. Well,” he went on impatiently as Dad hesitated, “what is it?” “Pardon me, sir,” ventured Dad. “A man who is captured may sometimes get away, but the papers he has are seized as soon as he is caught. If I am taken and if I get away again without my papers, is there any verbal message that I may take to General Hooker? Any outline of the nature of those plans I am to carry?” “No!” The general spoke sharply and in a tone of stark finality, turning his back on the volunteer courier and resuming his work at the table. His manner toward him had all at once changed from the unwontedly familiar to the customarily dictatorial. Again wondering a little, Dad left the tent and made his way hurriedly down the camp street to his own company’s quarters. There it was the work of two minutes to make his soldierly preparations for the trip. Then, with nothing to do but to await the arrival of the expected horse, he filled and lighted a pipe, sat down on a roll of blankets in the tent doorway, and with a stick fell to tracing in the dirt a line of his proposed route, that each step of the way might thereafter be fresh in his mind as he started on his errand. This act of concentration was by no means easy, for a half score of lounging infantrymen were lying on the grass near by, smoking and talking over the events of the preceding day’s battle. Realizing that a soldier in the ranks knows far less about the actual actions and effects of a battle in which he has just been engaged than does the non-combatant stay-at-home who reads a telegraphed account of it next day in his morning newspaper, Dad gave no particular heed to their frankly voiced conjectures and boasts.