e long rows of
cabins. Far to the rear a band was practising. Josiah listened, and with
a negative head-shake of disapproving criticism returned to the feather
picking and sang as he picked:

I wish I was in Dixie land,
In Dixie land, in Dixie land.

He held up the plucked fowl and said, "Must have been on short rations."

The early evening was quiet. Now and then a cloaked horseman went by
noiseless on the snow. Josiah looked up, laid down the chicken, and
listened to the irregular tramp of a body of men. Then, as the head of a
long column came near and passed before him between the rows of huts, he
stood up to watch them. "Prisoners," he said. Many were battle-grimed and
in tatters, without caps and ill-shod. Here and there among them a
captured officer marched on looking straight ahead. The larger part were
dejected and plodded on in silence, with heads down, while others stared
about them curious and from the cabins near by a few officers came out
and many soldiers gathered. As usual there were no comments, no sign of
triumph and only the silence of respect.

Josiah asked a guard where they came from. "Oh, Hancock's fight at
Hatcher's Run--got about nine hundred."

The crowd of observers increased in number as the end of the line drew
near. Josiah lost interest and sat down. "Got to singe that chicken," he
murmured, with the habit of open speech of the man who had lived long
alone. Suddenly he let the bird drop and exclaimed under his breath,
"Jehoshaphat!"--his only substitute for an oath--"it's him!" Among the
last of the line of captured men he saw one with head bent down looking
neither to the right nor the left--it was Peter Lamb! At this moment two
soldiers ran forward and shouted out something to the officer bringing up
the rear. He cried, "Halt! take out that man." There was a little
confusion, and Peter was roughly haled out of the mass. The officer
called a sergeant. "Guard this fellow well," and he bade the men who
had detected Lamb go with the guard.

Soldiers crowded in on them. "What's the matter--who is he?" they asked.

"Back, there!" cried the Lieutenant.

"A deserter," said some one. "Damn him."

Lamb was silent while between the two guards he was taken to the rear.
Josiah forgot his chicken and followed them at a distance. He saw Lamb
handcuffed and vainly protesting as he was thrust into the prison-hut of
the provostry.

Josiah asked one of the men who had brought about the arrest, "W