o run." He stood looking cautiously
out of an opening he had made in the willow branches. The regiments were
already in column, the leading one, the 4th, formed and disappearing in
the dust of the turnpike. "Air ye going now and have every damned
officer swearing at you? What do they care if your foot's cut and your
back aches? and you couldn't come no sooner. _I ain't a-going._" Steve's
eyes filled with tears. He felt sublimely virtuous; a martyr from the
first. "What does anybody there care for _me_! They wouldn't care if I
dropped dead right in line. Well, I ain't a-going to gratify them!
What's war, anyhow? It's a trap to catch decent folk in! and the
decenter you are the quicker you try to get out of it!" He closed the
willow branches and stepped back to his lair. "Let 'em bellow for Steve
just as loud as they like! I ain't got no call to fight Banks on this
here foot. If a damned provost-guard comes along, why I just fell asleep
and couldn't help it."

So tired was he, and so soothing still his retreat, that to fall asleep
was precisely what he did. The sun was twenty minutes nearer the zenith
when noise roused him--voices up and down the stream. He crawled across
the black earth and looked out. "Taliaferro's Brigade getting watered!
All I ask is you'll just let me and my willows alone."

He might ask, but Taliaferro's seemed hardly likely to grant.
Taliaferro's had a harder time even than the Stonewall finding water.
There was less there to find and it was muddier. The men, swearing at
their luck, ranged up and down the stream. It was presently evident that
the search might bring any number around or through Steve's cool
harbour. He cursed them, then, in a sudden panic, picked up his shoes
and slipped out at the copse's back door. Able-bodied stragglers, when
caught, were liable to be carried on and summarily deposited with their
rightful companies. Deserters fared worse. On the whole, Steve concluded
to seek safety in flight. At a little distance rose a belt of woods
roughly parallel with the road. Steve took to the woods, and found
sanctuary behind the bole of an oak. His eye advanced just beyond the
bark, he observed the movement of troops with something like a grin. On
the whole he thought, perhaps, he wouldn't rejoin. Taliaferro's men
hardly seemed happy, up and down the trodden, miry runlet. "Wuz a time
they wouldn't think a dog could drink there, and now just look at them
lapping it up! So many fine, stuc