leys, where fond eyes watched the sun rise, noted the stars,
to mark the special duties their darlings were doing in the watches of
the night. And then the mad music of cheers when the news came that the
young McClellan in West Virginia had scattered the adventurous columns
of Lee, capturing guns, men, and arms, and forever saving the great
Kanawha country to the Union! And in Kentucky the rebels had been
outmanoeuvred; while in Missouri the glorious Lyon and the crafty Blair
had, one in the Cabinet, the other in the camp, routed the secret,
black, and Janus-like rabble of treason and anarchy.

To feel that he was part of all this; that, at rest in the iron ring
girdling the capital, he was might in leash; that to-morrow he would be
vengeance let loose--this was the sustaining, exulting thought that made
the volunteer the best of soldiers. His heart was all in the glorious
ardor for action. Night and morning he looked proudly at the sacred
ensign waving lightly in the summer breeze, and he remembered that the
eyes of Washington had rested on the same standard at Valley Forge; that
the sullen battalions of Cornwallis had saluted it at Yorktown.

It was a beautiful ardor that filled the young hosts that waited in
leash on the green hills of the Potomac those months of turmoil, when
Scott and McDowell were straining the crude machinery of war to get
ready for the vital lunge. Jack and his Acredale squad, as the college
fellows were called, lived in a perpetual dream, from which the hard
realities of drill, now six hours a day, could not waken them. In days
of release they scoured the Maryland hills, secretly hoping that an
adventurous rebel picket might appear and give them occasion to return
to camp decked with preluding laurels. Mile after mile of the charming
woodland country they scoured, their hearts beating at the appearance of
any animate thing that for a brief, intoxicating moment they could
conjure into a rebel advance post. But, beyond wan and reticent yokels,
engaged in the primitive husbandry of this slave section, they never
encountered any one that could be counted overt enemies of the cause.
Money was plenty among these excursive groups, and they were welcomed in
Company K with effusive outbreaks by their less restive comrades.

As July wore on, the signs of movement grew. Regiments were moved away
mysteriously, and soon the Caribees were almost alone on Meridian Hill.
Jack was filled with dire fears that t