“It will do good to me, Colonel,” whispered Fitz Hugh, suddenly turning crimson.  “You forget me.”

Waldron’s face also flushed, and an angry sparkle shot from under his lashes in reply to this utterance of hate, but it died out in an instant.

“I have done a wrong, and I will accept the consequences,” he said.  “I pledge you my word that I will be at your disposal if I survive the battle.  Where do you propose to remain meanwhile?”

“I will take the same chance, sir.  I propose to do my share in the fighting if you will use me.”

“I am short of staff officers.  Will you act as my aid?”

“I will, Colonel,” bowed Fitz Hugh, with a glance which expressed surprise, and perhaps admiration, at this confidence.

Waldron turned, beckoned his staff officers to approach, and said, “Gentlemen, this is Captain Fitz Hugh of the —­th Delaware.  He has volunteered to join us for the day, and will act as my aid.  And now, Captain, will you ride to the head of the column and order it forward?  There will be no drum-beat and no noise.  When you have given your order and seen it executed, you will wait for me.”

Fitz Hugh saluted, sprang into his saddle and galloped away.  A few minutes later the whole column was plodding on silently toward its bloody goal.  To a civilian, unaccustomed to scenes of war, the tranquillity of these men would have seemed very wonderful.  Many of the soldiers were still munching the hard bread and raw pork of their meagre breakfasts, or drinking the cold coffee with which they had filled their canteens the day previous.  Many more were chatting in an undertone, grumbling over their sore feet and other discomfits, chaffing each other, and laughing.  The general bearing, however, was grave, patient, quietly enduring, and one might almost say stolid.  You would have said, to judge by their expressions, that these sunburned fellows were merely doing hard work, and thoroughly commonplace work, without a prospect of adventure, and much less of danger.  The explanation of this calmness, so brutal perhaps to the eye of a sensitive soul, lies mainly in the fact that they were all veterans, the survivors of marches, privations, maladies, sieges, and battles.  Not a regiment present numbered four hundred men, and the average was not above three hundred.  The whole force, including artillery and cavalry, might have been about twenty-five hundred sabres and bayonets.

At the beginning of the march Waldron fell into the rear of his staff and mounted orderlies.  Then the boy who had fled from Fitz Hugh dropped out of the tramping escort, and rode up to his side.

“Well, Charlie,” said Waldron, casting a pitying glance at the yet pallid face and anxious eyes of the youth, “you have had a sad fright.  I make you very miserable.”

“He has found us at last,” murmured Charlie in a tremulous soprano voice.  “What did he say?”