Forty years later John Barclay took from a box in a safety vault back
of his office in the city a newspaper. It was the Sycamore Ridge
_Banner_, yellow and creased and pungent with age. "This," he said to
Senator Myton, spreading the wrinkled sheet out on the mahogany table,
"this is my enlistment paper." He smiled as he read aloud:--

"At noon of our first day out we came across two stowaways. Hendricks,
aged twelve, son of our well-known and popular Mayor, and J. Barclay,
aged eleven, son of Mrs. M. Barclay, who, owing to the suddenness of
the departure of our troops for the seat of war in Missouri, and
certain business delays made necessary in ye editor's return, were
slipped out with our company rather than left in the rough and
uncertain city of Leavenworth. They are called by the boys of 'C'
company respectively 'the little sergeant and the little corporal,
Good Luck boys.'"

A little farther down the column was this paragraph:

"Aug. 2nd we went into camp on Sugar Creek, and some sport was had by
the men who went in bathing, taking the horses with them."

"Ever go in swimming with the horses, Senator?" asked Barclay. The
senator shook his head doubtfully.

"Well--you haven't. For if you had you'd remember it," answered
Barclay, and a hundred naked young men and two skinny, bony boys
splashed and yelled and ducked and wrestled and locked their strong
wet arms about the necks of the plunging horses and dived under them,
and rolled across them and played with them like young satyrs in the
cool water under the overhanging elms with the stars twinkling in the