ssachusetts infantry attended by a quartermaster of New York
militia.

Behind them tramped the regimental band of the 6th Massachusetts,
instruments slung; behind these, filling the street from gutter to
gutter, surged the sweating drummers, deafening every ear with
their racket; then followed the field and staff, then the Yankee
regiment, wave on wave of bayonets choking the thoroughfare far as
the eye could see, until there seemed no end to their coming, and
the cheering had become an unbroken howl.

Stephen turned to Berkley: "A fellow can't see too much of this
kind of thing and stand it very long. Those soldiers are no older
than I am!"

Berkley's ironical reply was drowned in a renewed uproar as the
Massachusetts soldiers wheeled and began to file into the Astor
House, and the New York militia of the escort swung past hurrahing
for the first Northern troops to leave for the front.

That day Berkley lunched in imagination only, seriously inclined to
exchange his present board and lodgings for a dish of glory and a
cot in barracks.

That evening, too, after a boarding-house banquet, and after
Burgess had done his offices, he took the air instead of other and
more expensive distraction; and tired of it thoroughly, and of the
solitary silver coin remaining in his pocket.

From his clubs he had already resigned; other and less innocent
haunts of his were no longer possible; some desirable people still
retained him on their lists, and their houses were probably open to
him, but the social instinct was sick; he had no desire to go; no
desire even to cross the river for a penny and look again on Ailsa
Paige. So he had, as usual, the evening on his hands, nothing in
his pockets, and a very weary heart, under a last year's evening
coat. And his lodgings were becoming a horror to him; the
landlady's cat had already killed two enormous rats In the hallway;
also cabbage had been cooked in the kitchen that day. Which left
him no other choice than to go out again and take more air.

Before midnight he had no longer any coin in his pockets, and he
was not drunk yet. The situation seemed hopeless, and he found a
policeman and inquired politely for the nearest recruiting station;
but when he got there the station was closed, and his kicks on the
door brought nobody but a prowling Bowery b'hoy, sullenly in quest
of single combat. So Berkley, being at leisure, accommodated him,
picked him up, propped him limply agai