Outside Josiah picked his lean chicken and whistled with such peculiar sweetness as is possible only to the black man.  Everything interested him.  Now and then he listened to the varied notes of the missiles far away and attracting little attention unless men were so near that the war-cries of shot and shell became of material moment.  The day was cold, and an early November snow lay on the ground and covered the long rows of cabins.  Far to the rear a band was practising.  Josiah listened, and with a negative head-shake of disapproving criticism returned to the feather picking and sang as he picked: 

I wish I was in Dixie land,
In Dixie land, in Dixie land.

He held up the plucked fowl and said, “Must have been on short rations.”

The early evening was quiet.  Now and then a cloaked horseman went by noiseless on the snow.  Josiah looked up, laid down the chicken, and listened to the irregular tramp of a body of men.  Then, as the head of a long column came near and passed before him between the rows of huts, he stood up to watch them.  “Prisoners,” he said.  Many were battle-grimed and in tatters, without caps and ill-shod.  Here and there among them a captured officer marched on looking straight ahead.  The larger part were dejected and plodded on in silence, with heads down, while others stared about them curious and from the cabins near by a few officers came out and many soldiers gathered.  As usual there were no comments, no sign of triumph and only the silence of respect.

Josiah asked a guard where they came from.  “Oh, Hancock’s fight at
Hatcher’s Run—­got about nine hundred.”

The crowd of observers increased in number as the end of the line drew near.  Josiah lost interest and sat down.  “Got to singe that chicken,” he murmured, with the habit of open speech of the man who had lived long alone.  Suddenly he let the bird drop and exclaimed under his breath, “Jehoshaphat!”—­his only substitute for an oath—­“it’s him!” Among the last of the line of captured men he saw one with head bent down looking neither to the right nor the left—­it was Peter Lamb!  At this moment two soldiers ran forward and shouted out something to the officer bringing up the rear.  He cried, “Halt! take out that man.”  There was a little confusion, and Peter was roughly haled out of the mass.  The officer called a sergeant.  “Guard this fellow well,” and he bade the men who had detected Lamb go with the guard.

Soldiers crowded in on them.  “What’s the matter—­who is he?” they asked.

“Back, there!” cried the Lieutenant.

“A deserter,” said some one.  “Damn him.”

Lamb was silent while between the two guards he was taken to the rear.  Josiah forgot his chicken and followed them at a distance.  He saw Lamb handcuffed and vainly protesting as he was thrust into the prison-hut of the provostry.

Josiah asked one of the men who had brought about the arrest, “Who is that man?”