had gone into the army from a grocery-store, and was a very thin,
small specimen with a very big, bulbous head; and, like many others of
his class, proved to be a perfect fire-eater in battle, and a regular
buzzard to escape fever and find food. But during the famous seven days
before Richmond a retreat was ordered of a part of the line which the
Buzzard helped compose, and he was confronted by the necessity, for his
friends were hastening him from behind, of crossing a gully by means of
a somewhat slender fallen tree. It was then that Aladdin saw him show
fear. Bullets tore up the bark of the tree, and pine needles, clipped
from the trees overhead, fell in showers. But he did not mind that. It
was the slenderness and instability of the fallen tree that froze the
marrow in his bones: would it bear his one hundred and twenty-four
pounds, or would it precipitate him, an awful drop of ten feet, into the
softest of muds at the bottom of the gully, where a sickeningly striped
but in reality harmless water-snake lay coiled?

Finally, pale and shaking, he ventured on the log, got half-way across,
turned giddy, and fell with such a howl of terror that it was only
equaled in vehemence by the efforts of the snake to get out of the way.
After which the Buzzard picked himself up, scrambled out, and continued
his retreat, scraping his muddied boots among the fallen leaves as he
went. "Some talk of Alexander and some of Hercules," but it may be that
an exceedingly giddy elevation coupled with a serpent would have
made shivering children of both those heroes. To each his own fear.
Margaret's and Aladdin's was the same they both feared Aladdin.

That afternoon the regiment was to leave for the front, and Aladdin went
to bid Margaret good-by. She and her father were still staying with the
Blankinships.

They had a very satisfactory talk, beginning with the beginning of
things, and going over their long friendship, laughing, remembering, and
regretting. Jack was to live with the St. Johns, and they talked much of
him, and of old Mrs. Brackett, and of affairs at home. Jack about this
time was in the seventh hell of despair, for his extreme youth had
prevented him from bringing to its triumphant conclusion a pleasant
little surprise, consisting of a blue uniform, which he had planned
for himself and others. No love of country stirred the bosom of the
guileless Jack; only hatred of certain books out of which he was obliged
to learn many