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"Please, sir, when I was haz I mean exercised the other night, I saw somebody taking photographs of it. Do you think I could get copies of them?" "What do you want them for?" asked Smith suspiciously. "I'd like to have something to remember it by," said Sam. "I want to be able to show that I did just what Generals Gramp and German did." Smith smiled. "All right," he replied.
The night after he got back I watched for a chance to speak with him alone. After supper he went into the sitting-room to look over his lumber accounts, and I stole in after him. "You remember Jotham's oxen, gramp?" I began. "Why, yes," said he, looking up. "Well, I know where they are," I continued. "Where?" he exclaimed in astonishment.
Harlan, you're going down there just as I said you're going with an open mind, clean hands, good, straight American spirit to do right just so far as a man in politics can do right! I want you to see for yourself. If you want my help in anything you shall have it. But it'll be Gramp advising his boy not a boss, hectoring. Believe that!"
The light of the lanterns flickered through the trees, now and then illuminating the topmost branches. Presently a man came and sat down near them, and said: "Don't get impatient. We're nearly ready for you." It was the voice of one of their two captors. "May I ask you a question, sir?" said Sam. "Blaze away," responded the man. "Was General Gramp hazed at this same place, do you know?"
He burst out: "Dammit, Harlan, I can see where you're going to land in this State if you'll let your old gramp have free rein! And the right kind of a wife is half the battle in what you're going into." "Have you got that right kind picked out for me along with the rest? You talk as though you had." It was said almost in the tone of insult.
As the latter brought the article from one of the baskets, Sam said to him in a low voice, "Did General Gramp take it out of that same bottle?" "Yes," said Smith; "strange to say, it's the very same one, and all through his life afterward he took tabasco three times a day." Sam rolled his eyes painfully to catch a glimpse of the historic bottle. Clark took it and applied it to Sam's lips.
"Jinks," said Smith in a moment of unwonted affability, "you've got a chance now to distinguish yourself. I'll see that you get fair play. Of course, you'll have to fight to a finish, but you must take your medicine like a man." "Did General Gramp ever have to fight here?" asked Sam, touching his cap. "Of course," said Smith, "and on that very ground, too.
Two or three cadets unfastened Sam and Cleary, still, however, leaving their arms bound behind them, and brought them to the open place under the wall where Sam had first seen them. Sam now saw nothing; walking in the steps of Generals Gramp and German, he felt the ecstasy of a Christian martyr. He would not have exchanged his lot with any one in the world.
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