hat
has only seen this day's work."

"They've had an unlucky birthday," he said, not inaptly, and rather
courteously, as he took them.

"Yes, my gloves heretofore have all been spoiled by the sabre," I
replied, keeping step with his charger. "I don't know but that you have
to thank a drunken guard for the pair, Sir; since he threatened to kill
me, if I kept them on my hands."

He gave a hasty look for his orderly.

"Point out the man, if you can, Sir," he said to me, and beckoned a
trooper to his side.

"I am obliged to you for your interference," I answered. "The man
marches third on the left there, and has his piece slung behind him. I
hope that some day, Sir, I may do you a favor."

A sense of humor, for which I must be grateful, considering the sombre
dejection of my marching mates, filled my breast as I thanked him for
putting one under guard for attempting (drunk) what he himself so
soberly accomplished,--the capture of my buckskins. He kept the
gauntlets very willingly, and ordered a sergeant to accompany me. But
there was generosity and magnificence in his action; the acquisition,
per duress, of others' property was a daily habit with him,--and to have
a sergeant for a guard was a considerable favor.

It was my desire to cultivate the Sergeant thus cast within my reach,
who otherwise might be a marplot, and who had good of some sort in him,
I judged from his appearance; although, as with his kind, it was
evidently very barren winter in his purse, and his summer clothes were
apparently too open. His butternut jacket, a poor tweed with a cotton
filling, was clasped about his throat with a shred of twine, flying away
thence loosely, showing a dirty cotton shirt beneath, and the rough edge
of the waistband of his pantaloons. The material of which these last
were made was a very impressible jean, and marked the number of his
journeys, could one but decipher them, in stains and intricate creases.
He had the same face of lifeless suet, and the yellow hair, that I have
noticed as very prevalent in the Rebel armies,--but withal an elasticity
of carriage that seemed too honest for the cause, an almost openness of
countenance, a cast of features tending towards amiability, which imbued
me with a trembling hope. I had designs upon the Sergeant, and intended
opening upon him with rhetoric, after, perhaps, some amicable
skirmishing. His detail to guard my person was a compliment to me which
only the initiated--those