Then Spruce suggested to the captain: "I guess I'd be more good in the hospital than I am here, Captain." And the captain (who was scared, poor lad, and had visions of the boys' mothers demanding the wasted lives of their sons at his hands) had his best sergeant put on the sick detail. If Spruce had been useful in camp he was invaluable in hospital. The head surgeon leaned on him, with a jest, and the young surgeon in charge with pretense of abuse. "You'll burst if you don't work off your steam, Spruce, so out with it. What is it _now_?" In this fashion he really sought both information and suggestion. Nor was he above being instructed in the innumerable delicacies of requisitions by the old regular, and he did not, when requisitions were unanswered and supplies appeared in unusual form, ask any embarrassing questions. "I get 'em from the Red Cross, sir," was Spruce's invariable and unquestioned formula. And the doctor in his reports accounted for what he had received and complained lustily because his requisitions were not honored, even as Spruce had desired, and, thereby, he obtained much credit, in the days to come. Spruce did not obtain any particular credit, but he saved a few lives, it is likely; and the sick men found him better than medicine. The captain always handed the committee letters over to him; and bought whatever he desired. "Captain's going to distinguish himself, give him a chance," thought Spruce, "he's got _sense_!" And by degrees he began to feel for the young volunteer a reflection of the worship which had secretly been offered to a certain fat little bald-headed captain of the old --steenth. His picture of the great day when he should have his triumph--quite as dear to him, perhaps, as any Roman general's to the Roman--now always included a vision of the captain, slender and straight and bright-eyed, at the head of the line; and he always could see the captain, later in the day, presenting him to his father; "Here's Sergeant Spruce, who has coached us all!" He had overheard those very words once said to a girl visiting the camp, and they clung to his memory with the persistent sweetness of the odor of violets.