The wheels of redress had turned, all the wheels, and ground out nothing. His troop commander sent for Leonidas and read him the indorsements. Leonidas, being instructed by a “guard-house lawyer,” demanded his papers, which were delivered to him, as was his right. These now went with his appeal to Washington. For Leonidas had written home to Sistah Smith, who had written to a Congressman, who had replied that he was ever for justice. Thus, with a long new letter from Leonidas to the Secretary of War (whose silence still remained unaccountable), did official tidings of the outrage to American manhood at length, through the Adjutant General’s Department, come to the man of the “portofolee--O.” Buttons were pressed and clerks despatched with messages; and there ensued a conference between the Congressman, the Adjutant-General, the Secretary of War, and the Lieutenant-General himself. The Congressman stated the case; the Secretary was quite uneasy, and talked a great deal, taking care not to express a single idea; but the Lieutenant-General was quite easy and talked only thus much: “Called her his sister? Got kicked? I should think so!” “General, this is good in you to help us,” said the Secretary, with symptoms of relief. “I did not wish to reach this conclusion without your corroboration.” Thus ended the conference. The original letter of Leonidas with its four indorsements pasted on it, and making quite a budget, now started its return course bearing a fifth indorsement containing the Secretary of War’s opinion signed by one of the Assistant Adjutants-General. It travelled through the back channels that you know, passing Whipple Barracks and reaching the hungry, unsated Leonidas many weeks after all traces had vanished from his trousers. During these weeks his life had been made a sorry thing by that song about the blister. Not even the sympathy of Cousin Xerxes could sweeten his embittered days. They were wholesome for him, to be sure; they began to cure him of being a watermelon; they even gave him gradually a just estimate of the Secretary’s speech at McPherson, and he grew into a strapping young trooper with many of the trooper’s habits in moderation. The only profane language that he used was in connection with the Secretary of War, whose tricky official language in his indorsement had utterly dodged his promise to stand behind him. But Leonidas could not comfortably live in a place where everybody remembered how he had (as Jones put it) “run around showing his pants.” He took his discharge at the first opportunity, and became an eminent cow-boy in the neighborhood, with a man’s full strength in his sinews, and a man’s anger silent in his heart. The hour for him to smile had not yet come. IV. THE ENERGY IS ONCE AGAIN TRANSMITTED