do?"

"I'd raise that gun, take deliberate aim at a square foot of air about
thirty feet over his head and pull the trigger."

"But your duty to your country tells you to do otherwise. Before you is
a foe trying to destroy the Union. You have come out armed to save that
Union, consequently you must fire straight at him and not at the air, in
order to reduce the number of our enemies."

"One enemy where there are so many would not count for anything in the
total. Your arithmetic will show you that Harry's percentage in the
Southern army is so small that it reaches the vanishing point. If I can
borrow from you, George, x equals Harry's percentage, which is nothing,
y equals the value of my hypothetical opportunity, which is nothing,
then x plus y equals nothing, which represents the whole affair, which
is nothing, that is, worth nothing to the Union. Hence I have no more
obligation to shoot Harry if I meet him than he has to shoot me."

"Well spoken, Dick," said Sergeant Whitley. "Some people, I reckon,
can take duty too hard. If you have one duty an' another an' bigger one
comes along right to the same place you ought to 'tend to the bigger
one. I'd never shoot anybody that was a heap to me just because he was
one of three or four hundred thousand who was on the other side. I've
never thought much of that old Roman father--I forget his name--who had
his son executed just because he wasn't doin' exactly right. There
was never a rule that oughtn't to have exceptions under extraordinary
circumstances."

"If you can establish the principle of exceptions," replied the young
Vermonter very gravely, "I will allow Dick to shoot in the air when he
meets his cousin in the height of battle, but it is a difficult task to
establish it, and if it fails Dick, according to all rules of logic and
duty, must shoot straight at his cousin's heart."

The other two looked at Warner and saw his left eyelid droop slightly. A
faint twinkle appeared in either eye and then they laughed.

"I reckon that Dick shoots high in the air," said the sergeant.

Dick, after a pleasant hour with his friends, went back to Colonel
Newcomb's quarters, where he spent the entire evening writing despatches
at dictation. He was hopeful that all this writing portended something,
but more days passed, and despite the impatience of both army and
public, there was no movement. Stories of confused and uncertain
fighting still came out of the west, but between Wa