The Confederate captain had called Dad her husband. She caught herself trembling with a soft, happy little emotion, which died swiftly as she realized that Dad might--might never speak to her again. In a corner of the room Jimmie stood anxiously watching beside the recumbent Joseph. He looked down. His father was looking up as anxiously. Suddenly all their former lack of sympathy for one another was forgotten. “Dad--grandad--” gasped the boy. It was all he could say, but it expressed many things--and Joseph Brinton understood them. “Yes, yes!” said he gently, and stroked his son’s hair. The silent, grim woman by the bed still watched and her lips moved in many prayers--prayers that Dad might recover--a prayer, too, for the mother of the Confederate captain. More than an hour passed. Dad’s heart still beat, evenly, soundly, but he did not awaken. Perhaps he would not, dreaded the old lady. A passionate tenderness came over her. She crossed to the corner where sat Jimmie and Joseph, and with soft words made her peace with Joseph and renewed his bandages. Jimmie’s hand she patted. She went to the door and snapped her fingers to Napoleon Bonaparte Dog, who was lying in the shade by the doorstone, but awake, ready for his little god to come out of the cottage again. Napoleon jumped up and came running. Emily tossed him a corner of hardtack. As she swiftly stepped to Dad’s cot again she found him lying awake, his eyes on her, filled with a great, soft-shining reverence. She knelt by the bed. “All right?” she whispered. “Yes, Emily.” Then their cheeks were together. All at once Mrs. Sessions sprang up and snapped out: “Well, I declare! We’re a fine lot. Jimmie, you go out and get me some fresh water. Never see such a shiftless lot as we are.” And up the road jingled the slow-moving hospital wagons. CHAPTER XXIV A LOST BURDEN Dad, his trifling hurts nearly well again, stood at attention in General Hooker’s new headquarters across the Maryland border. Thither, almost as soon as the Army of the Potomac had mobilized in Maryland, he had been summoned. The corps commander, for a miracle, had been as honest as he was inexpert, and had made full report to General McClellan, through Hooker, of the part Dad had played in drawing forth the endangered demi-corps from the Confederate trap during the retreat from Virginia. With the result that Captain James Dadd found himself promoted to the rank of brevet-major, and found himself incidentally the day’s hero of his corps. The latter honor he shared with his grandson, who, as Battle Jimmie, was enthusiastically adopted by the officers and men alike. The two chums bore their laurels with a similar and schoolboy sheepishness, seeking to hide as much as possible from the noisy adulation that was their meed.