“_Little_ boy? I take notice that just now when a passel of big, wise men were holding back and wanting to call it a day and run home, it was a little boy that jacked ’em up and showed ’em the way to win. And it’s the same little boy who’ll do the same thing again out front yonder if you’ll give him half a chance. Aw, lemme go! Out there where the fun is. Me and my drum!” “Jimmie!” reproved Dad sternly--though his eyes softened at manifestation of the fighting spirit he loved--“Apologize! Apologize at once for speaking disrespectfully to your superior officer. He could rightly send you to the guard-house for impertinence. A soldier’s duty is no duty when it lets him criticize his superiors. If nothing else proved you were still a little boy, your behavior just now proves it. Apologize!” “I--I apologize,” meekly answered Jimmie, accompanying his humble words with a horrible glower at the general by his grandfather’s side. “Don’t mention it, my lad,” returned the general, choking back a guffaw at the ludicrous contrast between face and voice. “And now, if your grandfather thinks well of it, you can go forward. Take your orders from him.” Dad’s eyes were wide with sudden distress. He knew what type of work was likely to be afoot beyond the hill-crest. He knew, too, that where the lead should rain thickest there would this irrepressible grandson of his be found. Once already, that day, the boy had escaped death almost miraculously. By the law of chance he could scarce count on the intervention of a second miracle in his behalf. “Jimmie!” he said. “I’ve missed you so, lad. And the world’s been so empty without my chum. It’s hard to risk a longer parting, now that we’ve just had the blind, unbelievable luck to meet again.” Jimmie sighed, thrust the drum behind him, dutifully saluted, and fell into step alongside his grandfather’s horse with chin stiffly set. Dad leaned down sideways in the saddle and smote him on the shoulder. “It takes a good soldier to go willingly into action. But it takes a blamed-sight better soldier to stay out of the action where his spirit is waiting for him to join it. Go ahead, lad! Forward! Do your own work your own way. I’ve no right to stay you.” The boy leaped forward, gripped Dad’s hand in an ecstatic instant’s pressure, then scuttled off up the hill ahead of the more slowly advancing staff. And from every hurrying regiment that he outdistanced rose a laughing cheer for Battle Jimmie. And so he went on toward the hill-crest, and beyond it, where crouched the unknown. CHAPTER XIX THE CLASH Thanks to Dad’s foresight, or to the Confederate leader’s confidence in his flank movement’s power to detain his proposed prey, the hilltop was gained by the Yankee vanguard while the Confederates were still slowly toiling up its farther and far-steeper slope. Before the advancing Confederates could clearly realize what was happening the Federal vanguard was bearing down upon them.