“Hear him!  O, hear him!” exclaimed Happy Tom.  “Old Arthur grows dithyrambic and hexametrical.  He fairly distills the essence of highfalutin poetry.”

“I don’t know that he’s so far fetched,” said sober Dalton.  “I feel a good deal that way myself.  I suppose, Thomas Langdon, that the colors of the world depend upon one’s own eyes.  What I call green may appear to you like the color of blue to me.  Now, Arthur really sees all these things that he’s telling about, because he has the eye of the mind with which to see them.  I’ve quit saying that people don’t see things, because I don’t see ’em myself.”

“Good for you, Professor,” said Langdon.  “That’s quite a lecture you gave me, long though not windy, and I accept it.  Those Elysian fields that Arthur was painting are real and he’s going to have his enchanted week as he calls it.  Arthur is a poet, sure enough.”

“I have written a few little verses which were printed in the Charleston Mercury,” said St. Clair.

“What’s this?  What’s this?” asked a mellow voice.  “Can it be possible that young gentlemen are discussing poetry between battles and with the enemy in sight?”

It was Colonel Leonidas Talbot, coming down the trench, and Lieutenant Colonel Hector St. Hilaire was just behind him.  The young officers rose and saluted promptly, but they knew there was no reproof in Colonel Talbot’s tone.

“We had to do it, sir,” said Harry respectfully.  “Something struck Arthur here, and like a fountain he gushed suddenly into poetry.  He had a most wonderful vision of the Elysian fields and of himself wandering through them for a week, knee deep in flowers, and playing the softest of music on a guitar.”

“He’s put that in about the guitar,” protested St. Clair.  “I never mentioned such a thing, but all the rest is true.”

“Well, if I had my way,” said the colonel, “you should have a guitar, too, if you wanted it, and I like that idea of yours about a week in the Elysian fields.  We’ll join you there and we’ll all walk around among the flowers, and Hector’s relative, that wonderful musician, young De Langeais, shall play to us on his violin, and maybe the famous Stonewall will come walking to us through the flowers, and he’ll have with him Albert Sidney Johnston, and Turner Ashby and all the great ones that have gone.”

The colonel stopped, and Harry felt a slight choking in his throat.

“In the course of this lull, Leonidas and I had some thought of resuming our unfinished game of chess,” said Lieutenant Colonel St. Hilaire, “but the time is really unpropitious and too short.  It may be that we shall have to wait until the war is over to conclude the match.  The enemy is pressing us hard, and I need not conceal from you lads that he will press us harder tomorrow.”