the memoranda on his desk, and now he was talking without notes. In
the array of grave, thoughtful faces, some actually somber and severe in
expression, a smile would have seemed out of place, yet, all of a sudden,
grim features relaxed, deep-set eyes twinkled and glanced quickly about
in search of kindred sympathetic spirits, and more than half the bearded
faces broadened into a grin of merriment and as many heads were suddenly
uplifted, for just as the gray-haired chief ended an impressive period
with the words: "It will be no laughing matter if I can lay hold of
them," there burst upon the surprised ears of the group a peal of the
merriest laughter imaginable--the rippling, joyous, musical laughter of
happy girlhood mingling with the hearty, wholesome, if somewhat boyish,
outburst of jollity, of healthful youth.

"Merciful powers!" exclaimed the chief. "I had forgotten all about those
people. They must have been here twenty minutes."

"Sixty-five, sir, by the watch," said a saturnine-looking soldier, tall
and stalwart, and wearing the shield of the adjutant-general's department
on the collar of his sack coat.

"They ought to go, then," was the placid suggestion of a third officer, a
man with keen eyes, thin, almost ascetic, face, but there twitched a
quaint humor about the lines of his lips. "That visit's past the retiring
age."

And then another peal of merriment from the adjoining tent put stop to
conversation.

"They don't lack for entertainers," hazarded a staff officer as soon as
he could make himself heard. "The solemn-looking Gothamite who came with
them must have slipped out."

"It seems he knows Colonel Armstrong," said the chief thoughtfully. "I
sent for him an hour ago, and he may be piloting Mr. Prime around camp,
looking up the runaway."

"Another case?" asked a brigade commander with a shrug of his shoulders.

"Another case," answered the general, with a sigh. "It isn't always home
troubles that drive them to it. This boy had everything a doting father
could give him. What on earth could make _him_ bolt and enlist for the
war?"

No one answered for a moment. Then the officer with the humorous twinkle
about the eyes and the twitch at the lip corners, bent forward, placed
his elbows on his knees, his fingers tip to tip, gazed dreamily at the
floor, and sententiously said:

"Girl."

Whereupon his next neighbor, a stocky, thickset man in the uniform of a
brigadier, never moving eye, head or ha