“That’s my turban, you idiot!” retorted Stephen, turning red as several of McDunn’s artillerymen began to laugh.  But he came over and shook hands and accepted a big piece of pie without further resentment.  “Hello, Burgess,” he added.

“How do you do, sir.”

“That damned Dutch sutler of ours,” commented Berkley, “puts clay in his pie-erust.  We’ll certainly have to fix him before long.  How are you, Steve, anyway?”

“Both socks full of tallow; otherwise I’m feeling fine,” said the boy.  “Did you hear those dirty Bucktail veterans back there poking fun at us?  Well, we never answer ’em nowadays; but the Zouaves are getting fearfully sick of it; and if we don’t go into battle pretty soon there’ll be a private war on—­” he winked—­“with those Pennsylvanians, you bet.  And I guess the Lancers will be in it, too.”

Berkley cast an evil eye on a pair of Pennsylvania soldiers who had come to see how the Zou-zous made camp; then he shrugged his shoulders, watching Burgess, who had started away to roam hungrily around the sutler’s camp again.

“After all,” he said, “these veterans have a right to jeer at us.  They’ve seen war; and now they know whether they’ll fight or run away.  It’s more than we know, so far.”

“Well, I tell you,” said Stephen candidly, “there’s no chance of my running away.  A fellow can’t skedaddle when his father’s looking at him.  Besides, Phil, I don’t know how it is, but I’m not very much afraid, not as much as I thought I’d be.”

Berkley looked at him curiously.  “Have you been much under fire?”

“Only that affair at the Blue Bridge—­you know yourself how it was.  After the first shell had made me rather sick at my stomach I was all right—­except that I hated to see father sitting up there on his horse while we were all lying snug in the wheat. . . .  How did you feel when the big shells came over?”

“Bad,” said Berkley briefly.

“Sick?”

“Worse.”

“I don’t see why you should feel queer, Phil—­after that bully thing you did with the escort——­”

“Oh, hell!” cut in Berkley savagely, “I’m sick of hearing about it.  If you all knew that I was too scared to realise what I was doing you’d let up on that episode.”

Stephen laughed.  “I hope our boys get scared in the same way. . . .  Hello, here’s a friend of yours I believe——­”

They turned to encounter Casson, the big dragoon, arm in arm with the artilleryman, Arthur Wye.

“Give us some pie, you son of a gun!” they suggested unceremoniously; and when supplied and munching, they all locked arms and strolled out across the grass toward the hill, where already, dark against the blinding blue, hundreds of idle soldiers had gathered to sit on the turf and stare at the tall cloud on the horizon, or watch the signal officer on the higher hill beyond, seated at his telescope, while, beside him, a soldier swung dirty square flags in the wind,