ted; yet earnest withal,
intensely patriotic, and often humorous, despite a touch of Puritan
austerity.

Phil, the "romantic chap," as he was called, looked his character to
the life. Slender, swarthy, melancholy-eyed, and darkly-bearded; with
feminine features, mellow voice, and alternately languid or vivacious
manners. A child of the South in nature as in aspect, ardent and
proud; fitfully aspiring and despairing; without the native energy
which moulds character and ennobles life. Months of discipline and
devotion had done much for him, and some deep experience was fast
ripening the youth into a man.

Flint, the long-limbed lumberman, from the wilds of Maine, was a
conscript who, when government demanded his money or his life,
calculated the cost, and decided that the cash would be a dead loss
and the claim might be repeated, whereas the conscript would get both
pay and plunder out of government, while taking excellent care
that government got very little out of him. A shrewd, slow-spoken,
self-reliant specimen, was Flint; yet something of the fresh flavor of
the backwoods lingered in him still, as if Nature were loath to give
him up, and left the mark of her motherly hand upon him, as she leaves
it in a dry, pale lichen, on the bosom of the roughest stone.

Dick "hailed" from Illinois, and was a comely young fellow, full of
dash and daring; rough and rowdy, generous and jolly, overflowing with
spirits and ready for a free fight with all the world.

Silence followed the last words, while the friendly moon climbed up
the sky. Each man's eye followed it, and each man's heart was busy
with remembrances of other eyes and hearts that might be watching and
wishing as theirs watched and wished. In the silence, each shaped for
himself that vision of home that brightens so many camp-fires, haunts
so many dreamers under canvas roofs, and keeps so many turbulent
natures tender by memories which often are both solace and salvation.

Thorn paced to and fro, his rifle on his shoulder, vigilant and
soldierly, however soft his heart might be. Phil leaned against the
tree, one hand in the breast of his blue jacket, on the painted
presentment of the face his fancy was picturing in the golden circle
of the moon. Flint lounged on the sward, whistling softly as he
whittled at a fallen bough. Dick was flat on his back, heels in air,
cigar in mouth, and some hilarious notion in his mind, for suddenly he
broke into a laugh.

"What is