owards us, the new-comer unstrapped his knapsack, spread his blanket
over it, and sat down unobtrusively.

"Rather damp night out," remarked Blakely, whose strong hand was
supposed to be conversation.

"Quite so," replied the stranger, not curtly, but pleasantly, and with
an air as if he had said all there was to be said about it.

"Come from the North recently?" inquired Blakely, after a pause.

"Yes."

"From any place in particular?"

"Maine."

"People considerably stirred up down there?" continued Blakely,
determined not to give up.

"Quite so."

Blakely threw a puzzled look over the tent, and seeing Ned Strong on
the broad grin, frowned severely. Strong instantly assumed an abstracted
air, and began humming softly,

"I wish I was in Dixie."

"The State of Maine," observed Blakely, with a certain defiance of
manner not at all necessary in discussing a geographical question, "is a
pleasant State."

"In summer," suggested the stranger.

"In summer, I mean," returned Blakely with animation, thinking he had
broken the ice. "Cold as blazes in winter, though--Isn't it?"

The new recruit merely nodded.

Blakely eyed the man homicidally for a moment, and then, smiling one of
those smiles of simulated gayety which the novelists inform us are more
tragic than tears, turned upon him with withering irony.

"Trust you left the old folks pretty comfortable?"

"Dead."

"The old folks dead!"

"Quite so."

Blakely made a sudden dive for his blanket, tucked it around him with
painful precision, and was heard no more.

Just then the bugle sounded "lights out,"--bugle answering bugle in
far-off camps. When our not elaborate night-toilets were complete,
Strong threw somebody else's old boot at the candle with infallible
aim, and darkness took possession of the tent. Ned, who lay on my left,
presently reached over to me, and whispered, "I say, our friend 'quite
so' is a garrulous old boy! He'll talk himself to death some of these
odd times, if he is n't careful. How he _did_ run on!"

The next morning, when I opened my eyes, the new member of Mess 6 was
sitting on his knapsack, combing his blonde beard with a horn comb. He
nodded pleasantly to me, and to each of the boys as they woke up, one by
one. Blakely did not appear disposed to renew the animated conversation
of the previous night; but while he was gone to make a requisition for
what was in pure sarcasm called coffee, Curtis ventured to ask the man