e, recovered their muskets, and bowed themselves
into the yard. Soon afterward I bade the young ladies good night, and
repaired to my room. The tall man and his associate were pacing up and
down the grass-plot, and they looked very cold and comfortless, I
thought. I should have liked to obtain for them a draught of cider, but
prudently abstained; for every man in the army would thereby become
cognizant of its existence. So I placed my head once more upon a soft
pillow, and pitied the chilled soldiers who slept upon the turf. I
thought of Miss Bessie with her roguish eyes, and wondered what themes
were now engrossing her. I asked myself if this was the romance of war,
and if it would bear relating to one's children when he grew as old and
as deaf as the wheezy gentleman down-stairs. In fine, I was a little
sentimental, somewhat reflective, and very drowsy. So, after a while,
processions of freebooting soldiers, foraging Quartermasters, deaf
gentlemen, Fogg's regiment, and multitudes of ghosts from Manassas,
drifted by in my dreams. And, in the end, Miss Bessie's long curls
brushed into my eyes, and I found the morning, ruddy as her cheeks,
blushing at the window.

CHAPTER V.

WHAT A MARCH IS IN FACT.

I found at breakfast, that Miss Bessie had been placed beside me, and I
so far forgot myself as to forget all other persons at the table. Miss
Priscilla asked to be helped to the corn-bread, and I deposited a
quantity of the same upon Miss Bessie's plate. Miss Bell asked if I did
not love _dear_ old Virginia, and I replied to Miss Bessie that it had
lately become very attractive, and that, in fact, I was decidedly
rebellious in my sympathy with the distressed Virginians. I _did_
except, however, the man darkly mooted as "Henry," and hoped that he
would be disfigured--not killed--at the earliest engagement. The deaf
old gentleman bristled up here and asked _who_ had been killed at the
recent engagement. There was a man named Jeems Lee,--a distant
connection of the Lightfoots,--not the Hampshire Lightfoots, but the
Fauquier Lightfoots,--who had distinctly appeared to the old gentleman
for several nights, robed in black, and carrying a coffin under his arm.
Since I had mentioned his name, he recalled the circumstance, and hoped
that Jeems Lightfoot had not disgraced his ancestry. Nevertheless, the
deaf gentleman was not to be understood as expressing any opinion upon
the merits of the war. For _his_ part he thought