with his companions as much as circumstances would allow him. In the evening he wandered a few paces into the gloom. From this little distance the many fires, with the black forms of men passing to and fro before the crimson rays, made weird and satanic effects. 

 He lay down in the grass. The blades pressed tenderly against his cheek. The moon had been lighted and was hung in a treetop. The liquid stillness of the night enveloping him made him feel vast pity for himself. There was a caress in the soft winds; and the whole mood of the darkness, he thought, was one of sympathy for himself in his distress. 

 He wished, without reserve, that he was at home again making the endless rounds from the house to the barn, from the barn to the fields, from the fields to the barn, from the barn to the house. He remembered he had so often cursed the brindle cow and her mates, and had sometimes flung milking stools. But, from his present point of view, there was a halo of happiness about each of their heads, and he would have sacrificed all the brass buttons on the continent to have been enabled to return to them. He told himself that he was not formed for a soldier. And he mused seriously upon the radical differences between himself and those men who were dodging implike around the fires. 

 As he mused thus he heard the rustle of grass, and, upon turning his head, discovered the loud soldier. He called out, “Oh, Wilson!” 

 The latter approached and looked down. “Why, hello, Henry; is it you? What are you doing here?” 

 “Oh, thinking,” said the youth. 

 The other sat down and carefully lighted his pipe. “You’re getting blue my boy. You’re looking thundering peek-ed. What the dickens is wrong with you?” 

 “Oh, nothing,” said the youth. 

 The loud soldier launched then into the subject of the anticipated fight. “Oh, we’ve got ’em now!” As he spoke his boyish face was wreathed in a gleeful smile, and his voice had an exultant ring. “We’ve got ’em now. At last, by the eternal thunders, we’ll lick ’em good!” 

 “If the truth was known,” he added, more soberly, “they’ve licked us about every clip up to now; but this time—this time—we’ll lick ’em good!” 

 “I thought you was objecting to this march a little while ago,” said the youth coldly. 

 “Oh, it wasn’t that,” explained the other. “I 

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