an oath, or--or anything old Oswald
would say, so it must be a joke."

"Well, in that sense it may pass, like a tipsy soldier without the
countersign."

"Oh, come now, Jack, these stars are really dazzling you!"

"Not but I'll make you see some that will dazzle you, if you don't treat
your superior more respectfully."

"Oh, the punch you think of giving me wouldn't solve this star problem;
it requires to be made in the old--the milky way."

But Barney's astral jokes were brought to a period by the sharp note of
the bugle, as Colonel Oswald, very important under the eye of so many
big-wigs, magnificently ordered the march. The regiment passed up the
steep hill, out Fourteenth Street--then a red clay thoroughfare of
sticky mire with only here and there a negro's shanty where the palaces
of the rich rise to-day. The men learned something of their future
enemy, Virginia mud, as they climbed the red gorge and debouched on
Meridian Hill, where, presently, an aide-de-camp marked the ground
assigned the regiment, and the real life of the soldier began. How tame
to tell, but how "imperial the hour" when these one thousand lads first
went, on guard! Yes, the fact was now before them. They were no longer
segregated atoms, inert, ineffective, eccentric. They were part of that
mighty bulwark of blood and iron that stood between law and rebellion,
between the nation's heart and the assassin dagger of disunion.

How proud and glad and manly they felt, these bright-eyed boys--for boys
they mostly were; not a hundred in the regiment had seen their
five-and-twentieth year. One razor would have been ample for the beards
of the whole battalion. And oh, the nameless, the intoxicating sense of
solidarity as they swept the vast reach of hillsides, and saw the white
tents in brooding immensity on either hand! Yes, yonder, far across the
wondrous belt of water, touching loyalty and rebellion in its mighty
rush seaward, they could distinguish the cities of canvas on the distant
Virginia shore.

"It makes a fellow feel as Godfrey's hosts felt when they came in sight
of the Bosporus, and the hordes of the Saracens on the plains of the
Hellespont," Jack said, exultingly, as Barney stood on a pile of camp
equipages above him, surveying the quickening spectacle.

"I don't know how Godfrey's fellows felt, Jack, but it _do_ make a man
feel kinder able to do something with so many near by to lend a hand.
But, stars and garters! what a head it