The train leads off.  We follow, by the track.  Presently the train returns.  We pass it and trudge on in light marching order, carrying arms, blankets, haversacks, and canteens.  Our knapsacks are upon the train.

Fortunate for our backs that they do not have to bear any more burden!  For the day grows sultry.  It is one of those breezeless baking days which brew thunder-gusts.  We march on for some four miles, when, coming upon the guards of the Massachusetts Eighth, our howitzer is ordered to fall out and wait for the train.  With a comrade of the Artillery, I am placed on guard over it.

ON GUARD WITH HOWITZER NO.  TWO.

Henry Bonnell is my fellow-sentry.  He, like myself, is an old campaigner in such campaigns as our generation has known.  So we talk California, Oregon, Indian life, the Plains, keeping our eyes peeled meanwhile, and ranging the country.  Men that will tear up track are quite capable of picking off a sentry.  A giant chestnut gives us little dots of shade from its pigmy leaves.  The country about us is open and newly ploughed.  Some of the worm-fences are new, and ten rails high; but the farming is careless, and the soil thin.

Two of the Massachusetts men come back to the gun while we are standing there.  One is my friend Stephen Morris, of Marblehead, Sutton Light Infantry.  I had shared my breakfast yesterday with Stephe.  So we refraternize.

His business is,—­“I make shoes in winter and fishin’ in summer.”  He gives me a few facts,—­suspicious persons seen about the track, men on horseback in the distance.  One of the Massachusetts guard last night challenged his captain.  Captain replied, “Officer of the night” Whereupon, says Stephe, “The recruit let squizzle and jest missed his ear.”  He then related to me the incident of the railroad station.  “The first thing they know’d,” says he, “we bit right into the depot and took charge.”  “I don’t mind,” Stephe remarked,—­“I don’t mind life, nor yit death; but whenever I see a Massachusetts boy, I stick by him, and if them Secessionists attackt us to-night, or any other time, they’ll git in debt.”

Whistle, again! and the train appears.  We are ordered to ship our howitzer on a platform car.  The engine pushes us on.  This train brings our light baggage and the rear guard.

A hundred yards farther on is a delicious fresh spring below the bank.  While the train halts, Stephe Morris rushes down to fill my canteen.  “This a’n’t like Marblehead,” says Stephe, panting up; “but a man that can shin up them rocks can git right over this sand.”

The train goes slowly on, as a rickety train should.  At intervals we see the fresh spots of track just laid by our Yankee friends.  Near the sixth mile, we began to overtake hot and uncomfortable squads of our fellows.  The unseasonable heat of this most breathless day was too much for many of the younger men, unaccustomed to rough work, and weakened by want of sleep and irregular food in our hurried movements thus far.