"Out here somewhere. No, not in the army exactly; no, nor in the navy,
but--I expect him in camp to-night. If he comes you'll have to work when
you ought to be asleep. No, he is not in the secret service, only in _a_
secret service; running hospital supplies through the enemy's lines
into ours."

I was thrilled. _I_ was taken into the staff's confidence! Me, _Smith!_
That _Major Harper_ would tell me part of a matter to conceal the rest
of it did not enter my dreams, good as I was at dreaming. The flattery
went to my brain, and presently, without the faintest preamble, I asked
if there was any war-correspondent at headquarters just now. There came
a hostile flash in his eyes, but instantly it passed, and with all his
happy mildness he replied, "No, nor any room for one."

Just then entered an ordnance-sergeant, so smart in his rags that the
Major's affability seemed hardly a condescension. He asked me to supper
with his mess--"of staff _attatchays_," he said, winking one eye and
hitching his mouth; at which the Major laughed with kind disapprobation,
and the jocose sergeant explained as we went that that was only one of
Scott Gholson's mispronunciations the boys were trying to tease him
out of.

I found the clerks' mess a bunch of bright good fellows. After supper,
stretched on the harsh turf under the June stars, with everyone's head
(save mine) in some one's lap, we smoked, talked and sang. Only Gholson
was called away, by duty, and so failed to hear the laborious jests got
off at his expense. To me the wits were disastrously kind. Never had I
been made a tenth so much of; I was even urged to sing "All quiet along
the Potomac to-night," and was courteously praised when I had done so.
But there is where affliction overtook me; they debated its authorship.