e Darby. He was too
strong to be sickly as one of the Mills boys was, who died of fever in
hospital only three months after they went in, and too silent to be as
the other, who was jolly and could dance and sing a good song and was
soon very popular in the company; more popular even than Old Cove, who
was popular in several rights, as being about the oldest man in the
company and as having a sort of dry wit when he was in a good humor,
which he generally was. Little Darby was hardly distinguished at all,
unless by the fact that he was somewhat taller than most of his comrades
and somewhat more taciturn. He was only a common soldier of a common
class in an ordinary infantry company, such a company as was common in
the army. He still had the little wallet which he had picked up in the
path that morning he left home. He had asked both of the Mills boys
vaguely if they ever had owned such a piece of property, but they had
not, and when old Cove told him that he had not either, he had contented
himself and carried it about with him somewhat elaborately wrapped up
and tied in an old piece of oilcloth and in his inside jacket pocket for
safety, with a vague feeling that some day he might find the owner
or return it. He was never on specially good terms with the Millses.
Indeed, there was always a trace of coolness between them and him. He
could not give it to them. Now and then he untied and unwrapped it in
a secret place and read a little in the Testament, but that was all.
He never touched a needle or so much as a pin, and when he untied the
parcel he generally counted them to see that they were all there.

So the war went on, with battles coming a little oftener and food
growing ever a little scarcer; but the company was about as before,
nothing particular--what with killing and fever a little thinned, a
good deal faded; and Little Darby just one in a crowd, marching with the
rest, sleeping with the rest, fighting with the rest, starving with
the rest. He was hardly known for a long time, except for his silence,
outside of his mess. Men were fighting and getting killed or wounded
constantly; as for him, he was never touched; and as he did what he was
ordered silently and was silent when he got through, there was no one
to sing his praise. Even when he was sent out on the skirmish line as
a sharp-shooter, if he did anything no one knew it. He would disappear
over a crest, or in a wood, and reappear as silent as if he were hun