“They’re needing you--and themselves a lot more right _here_!” panted Dad, his voice hoarse and spent with the battle. “Sound the recall!” “What?” yelled Jimmie in the unbelieving tone of a soldier who is ordered to retreat even before the first volley has been fired. “Sound the recall!” repeated Dad. “Sound it, quick! My voice is gone, and they’re plumb crazy! They’re liable to run into an ambuscade beyond there and lose all we’ve gained. Sound the recall!” “The recall,” sneered Jimmie insolently as he strove in vain to tug free from the hand on his shoulder, “is the one piece of war-music I’ve never took the trouble to learn, nor wanted to, neither.” “Jimmie Brinton,” declaimed Dad in a terribly solemn and awe-compelling rumble, “I’ve never laid hand to you in my life, and I hoped I’d never have to. But unless you sound the recall, and sound it loud enough to bring those lunatics back here on the double--why, I’m going to take you over my knee right here and now and--” “Dad!” screamed Jimmie, the smoke-mists gouged out of his eyes and his gaze for the first time resting on the stern, loving old face above him. “Dad!” he repeated, his short arms clasping the veteran convulsively about the waist. “Oh, Dad, it’s--it’s--_you_!” “Jimmie, dear lad,” broke in his grandfather, “joy can wait, but trouble can’t. Sound that recall!” Jimmie snatched up his drum. “I’d play ‘Dixie’ or the ‘Bonnie Blue Flag’ if you ordered it,” he said adoringly, and the roll of the “Recall” cracked out. Again and again he played it until the pursuing Federals heard it and obeyed; halted and turned back to their duty. CHAPTER XVIII “GENERAL” DAD Meantime, Dad was saying to his grandson: “Maybe you think we’ve won a little victory. We have. Maybe you think the retreat of those Confeds was our victory. It wasn’t. The victory was our getting these guns of theirs, especially that big swivel-gun. “If we can save every cannon used here and get them all safe back to our own lines, that’ll spell victory. Not the fact that one crowd made another crowd run away. “In war the victor isn’t the fellow who chases the other fellow. He’s the man who is able to grab the weapons and provisions and ammunition that make the other fellow dangerous. We can’t buy batteries and guns like these for less than a fortune, and the Confederates can’t replace them at any price. “That’s how we harm them more than if we killed fifty thousand of them. That’s why I told you to sound the recall.” “I--I see,” admitted Jimmie shamefacedly. “They’re beginning to come back now. Gee, if a party of Confeds had flanked us and run off the guns while I was refusing to sound the recall, I’d ’a’ wanted to shoot myself.” “That’s all right, sonny. A man often has to stop to revise his list of the world’s great men and give himself a lower place in it. It’s lucky for him if his blunder’s no worse than yours in telling an old fool--”