De Langeais began to play a famous old song of home, and Harry’s mind traveled back on its lingering note to his father’s beautiful house and grounds, close by Pendleton, and all the fine country about it, in which he and Dick Mason and the boys of their age had roamed.  He remembered all the brooks and ponds and the groves that produced the best hickory nuts.  When should he see them again and would his father be there, and Dick, and all the other boys of their age!  Not all!  Certainly not all, because some were gone already.  And yet this plaintive note of the homes they had left behind, while it brought a tear to many an eye, made no decrease in martial determination.  It merely hardened their resolution to win the victory all the sooner, and bring the homecoming march nearer.

De Langeais ended on a wailing note that died like a faint sigh in the pine forest.  Then he came back to earth, sprang up, and put his violin in its case.  Applause spread out and swelled in a low, thunderous note, but de Langeais, who was as modest as he was talented, quickly hid himself among his friends.

The sun sank behind the blue mountains, and twilight came readily over the pine and cedar forests.  Colonel Talbot and Lieutenant-Colonel St. Hilaire, who had a large tent together, invited the youths to stay awhile with them as their guests and talk.  All the soldiers dispersed to their own portions of the great camp, and there would be an hour of quiet and rest, until the camp cooks served supper.

It had been a lively day for Harry, his emotions had been much stirred, and now he was glad to sit in the peace of the evening on a stone near the entrance of the tent, and listen to his friends.  War drew comrades together in closer bonds than those of peace.  He was quite sure that St. Clair, Dalton and Happy Tom were his friends for life, as he was theirs, and the two colonels seemed to have the same quality of youth.  Simple men, of high faith and honor, they were often childlike in the ways of the world, their horizons sometimes not so wide as those of the lads who now sat with them.

“As I told Harry,” said Lieutenant-Colonel St. Hilaire to Julien, “you shall have that talent of yours cultivated further after the war.  Two years more of study and you will be among the greatest.  You must know, lads, that for us who are of French descent, Paris is the world’s capital in the arts.”

“And for many of English blood, too,” said Colonel Talbot.

Then they talked of more immediate things, of the war, the armies and the prospect of the campaigns.  Harry, after an hour or so, returned to headquarters and he found soldiers making a bed for the commander-in-chief under the largest of the pines.  Lee in his campaigns always preferred to sleep in the open air, when he could, and it required severe weather to drive him to a tent.  Meanwhile he sat by a small fire—­ the October nights were growing cold—­and talked with Peyton and other members of his staff.