You are a darling good man 103]

"You are a darling good man," said the little girl, dancing on the
gravel path. The mother blushed and said,

"Why, Maudie, don't be so rude;" and there was a shout:

"Fall in!"

The lieutenant rode up to me and asked, as he noticed the glad smiles on
the faces of the ladies, if this was a family reunion, and, apologizing
for being compelled to raid the plantation, we rode away. I was afraid
they would mention the news I had brought them, and the lieutenant would
tell the truth, so I was glad to move. I was glad to go, for if I had
remained longer I would have cried like a baby, and given them back the
horse, and walked to camp. As we moved away, I took out my knife and
cut the string that held the smoked ham on my saddle, and had the
satisfaction of hearing it drop on the path before the house. I could
not give back the husband of the blue-eyed woman, the son of the saintly
Southern mother, the father of the sweet child, but I _could_ leave that
ham. As we rode back to camp that beautiful moonlight night, I did not
join in the singing of the boys, or the jokes. I just thought of that
happy home I had left, and how it would be stricken, later, when the
news was brought them, and wondered if that fearful lie I had been
telling, them was justifiable, under the circumstances, and it it would
be laid up against me, charged up in the book above. That night I slept
on the ground on some corn fodder and dreamed of nothing but blue-eyed
mamma's and golden-haired Maudie's and white-haired angel grandmothers.

CHAPTER VII.

"Boots and Saddles"--"I am the Colonel's Orderly"--Riding
Fifty Miles on an Empty Stomach--The Chaplain Appears--I am
Wounded by a Locomotive and a Piece of Coal--I Nearly Kill
an Old Man.

When our foraging party got back to camp, and I unloaded the corn fodder
from my horse, I was about as disgusted with war as a man could be. The
faces of those people I had met at the plantation rose up before me, and
I could imagine how they would look when they heard that the Confederate
soldier who was their all, was dead. I hoped that they would never hear
of it. While I was thinking the matter over, and grooming my horse, the
chaplain came along and took nearly all the fodder I had brought in, and
fed it to his horse, and asked me where the chickens and hams, and sweet
potatoes were. I told him I didn't get any. Then he spoke very plainly
to me, plainer