o. So in the
night, without leave-taking or consent of his parents, he departed.
The combined Federal, State, and city bounties offered at Philadelphia
amounted to nine hundred dollars cash that dreadful winter before
Richmond fell, and Harry sent the money home triumphantly in time to
pay his father's notes and save the store.

While the young soldier thought it all over, carbine and sabre came
out more and more distinctly outlined above the mud-plastered
fireplace. The drizzle had ceased, the drip into the trench was almost
finished, intense stillness ruled; Harry half expected to hear cocks
crow from out such silence.

Listening for them, his dreamy mind brooded over both hosts, in a
vision even as wide as the vast spread of the Republic in which they
lay as two huddles of miserable men. For what were they all about him
this woful, wet night? they all fain, as he, for home and industry and
comfort. What delusion held them? How could it be that they could not
all march away and separate, and the cruel war be over? Harry caught
his breath at the idea,--it seemed so natural, simple, easy, and good
a solution. Becoming absorbed in the fancy, tired of listening, and
soothed by the silence, he was falling asleep as he sat, when a heavy
weight seemed to fall, far away. Another--another--the fourth had the
rumble of distant thunder, and seemed followed by a concussion of the
air.

"Hey--Big Guns! What's up toward City Point?" cried Bader, sitting up.
"I tell you they're at it. It can't be so far away as Butler. What? On
the left too! That was toward Hatcher's Run! Harry, the rebs are out
in earnest! I guess you did hear the pickets trying to stop 'em. What
a morning! Ha--Fort Hell! see that!"

The outside world was dimly lighted up for a moment. In the
intensified darkness that followed Bader's voice was drowned by the
crash of a great gun from the neighboring fort. _Flash, crash--flash,
crash--flash, crash_ succeeded rapidly. Then the intervals of Fort
Hell's fire lengthened to the regular periods for loading, and between
her roars were heard the sullen boom of more distant guns, while
through all the tumult ran a fierce undertone,--the infernal hurrying
of musketry along the immediate front.

"The Johnnies must have got in close somehow," cried Bader. "Hey,
Sergeant?"

"Yes," shouted Gravely. "Scooped up the pickets and supports too in
the rain, I guess. Turn out, boys, turn out! there'll be a wild day.
Kid! Where