“The ‘on to Richmond’ business?”

“Yes.”

“I wonder what they’ll do about it over yonder,” said Curtis, pointing over his right shoulder.  By “over yonder” he meant the North in general and Massachusetts especially.  Curtis was a Boston boy, and his sense of locality was so strong that, during all his wanderings in Virginia, I do not believe there was a moment, day or night, when he could not have made a bee-line for Faneuil Hall.

“Do about it?” cried Strong.  “They’ll make about two hundred thousand blue flannel trousers and send them along, each pair with a man in it,—­all the short men in the long trousers, and all the tall men in the short ones,” he added, ruefully contemplating his own leg-gear, which scarcely reached to his ankles.

“That’s so,” said Blakely.  “Just now, when I was tackling the commissary for an extra candle, I saw a crowd of new fellows drawing blankets.”

“I say there, drop that!” cried Strong.  “All right, sir, didn’t know it was you,” he added hastily, seeing it was Lieutenant Haines who had thrown back the flap of the tent, and let in a gust of wind and rain that threatened the most serious bronchial consequences to our discontented tallow dip.

“You’re to bunk in here,” said the lieutenant, speaking to some one outside.  The some one stepped in, and Haines vanished in the darkness.

When Strong had succeeded in restoring the candle to consciousness, the light fell upon a tall, shy-looking man of about thirty-five, with long, hay-colored beard and mustache, upon which the rain-drops stood in clusters, like the night-dew on patches of cobweb in a meadow.  It was an honest face, with unworldly sort of blue eyes, that looked out from under the broad visor of the infantry cap.  With a deferential glance towards us, the new-comer unstrapped his knapsack, spread his blanket over it, and sat down unobtrusively.

“Rather damp night out,” remarked Blakely, whose strong hand was supposed to be conversation.

“Quite so,” replied the stranger, not curtly, but pleasantly, and with an air as if he had said all there was to be said about it.

“Come from the North recently?” inquired Blakely, after a pause.

“Yes.”

“From any place in particular?”

“Maine.”

“People considerably stirred up down there?” continued Blakely, determined not to give up.

“Quite so.”

Blakely threw a puzzled look over the tent, and seeing Ned Strong on the broad grin, frowned severely.  Strong instantly assumed an abstracted air, and began humming softly,

    “I wish I was in Dixie.”

“The State of Maine,” observed Blakely, with a certain defiance of manner not at all necessary in discussing a geographical question, “is a pleasant State.”

“In summer,” suggested the stranger.

“In summer, I mean,” returned Blakely with animation, thinking he had broken the ice.  “Cold as blazes in winter, though,—­isn’t it?”