Bullets tore up the bark of the tree, and pine needles, clipped from the trees overhead, fell in showers.  But he did not mind that.  It was the slenderness and instability of the fallen tree that froze the marrow in his bones:  would it bear his one hundred and twenty-four pounds, or would it precipitate him, an awful drop of ten feet, into the softest of muds at the bottom of the gully, where a sickeningly striped but in reality harmless water-snake lay coiled?

Finally, pale and shaking, he ventured on the log, got half-way across, turned giddy, and fell with such a howl of terror that it was only equaled in vehemence by the efforts of the snake to get out of the way.  After which the Buzzard picked himself up, scrambled out, and continued his retreat, scraping his muddied boots among the fallen leaves as he went.  “Some talk of Alexander and some of Hercules,” but it may be that an exceedingly giddy elevation coupled with a serpent would have made shivering children of both those heroes.  To each his own fear.  Margaret’s and Aladdin’s was the same they both feared Aladdin.

That afternoon the regiment was to leave for the front, and Aladdin went to bid Margaret good-by.  She and her father were still staying with the Blankinships.

They had a very satisfactory talk, beginning with the beginning of things, and going over their long friendship, laughing, remembering, and regretting.  Jack was to live with the St. Johns, and they talked much of him, and of old Mrs. Brackett, and of affairs at home.  Jack about this time was in the seventh hell of despair, for his extreme youth had prevented him from bringing to its triumphant conclusion a pleasant little surprise, consisting of a blue uniform, which he had planned for himself and others.  No love of country stirred the bosom of the guileless Jack; only hatred of certain books out of which he was obliged to learn many useless things, such as reading, writing, spelling, and arithmetic.  Besides, word had come to him that persimmons were to be had for the picking and chickens for the broiling in that country toward which the troops were heading.  And much also had he heard concerning the beauty of Southern maidens, and of the striped watermelons in the watermelon-patch.  And so he was to be left behind, and God was not good.

Toward the end their talk got very serious.

“I’m going to turn over a new leaf,” said Aladdin, “and be better things, Margaret, and you must save up a lot of pride to have in me if I do, and perhaps it will all come right in the end.”

“You know how fond I am of you,” said Margaret, “and because I am, and because you’re all the big things that are hard to be, I want you to be all the little things that ought to be so easy to be.  That doesn’t seem very plain, but I mean—­”

“I know exactly what you mean,” said Aladdin.  “Don’t you suppose I know myself pretty well by this time, and how far I’ve got to climb before I have a ghost of a right to tell you what I tell you every time I look at you?”