of inaction. So he did his
private's duty bravely, with cheery patience, relieving many a slender
boy's arms of his gun, helping many another with words of cheer as he
slumped on at his side, always with some device for making their dreary
night-stops more endurable. Thanksgiving came and went. George went
home on furlough. Moore refused one, and ate the day's extra allowance
of tough beef and insipid rice with much fought-against memories of his
New England festivals. The winter went on. Christmas days came. The
man's brown face was getting positively thinner with homesick
recollections of the Southern carnival. This brilliant, ready spirit,
who never grew sour nor selfish under any circumstances, actually spent
two good hours, the afternoon before Christmas day, in a brown study,
and with a suspicious, tightened feeling in his throat, and mistiness in
his eyes. Coming in at nightfall from his picket duty, tired and hungry,
Jim Murphy, stretching his long length before the fire, rose on his
elbow to find half a dozen epistles he had brought down to camp that
day.

'Yer letthers, Musther Moore.' Jim, even with his sudden accession of
independence as an American citizen, paid unconscious deference to the
world-old subtile difference between gentleman and 'rough,' and used the
title involuntarily.

He opened them sitting by the same fire, munching his hard tack as he
read. Murphy, watching him, saw his lips quiver and work over one
bearing half a dozen postmarks--a letter from his mother, conveyed
across the lines by some sleight-of-hand of influence or pay, and mailed
and remailed from place to place, till weeks had grown into months since
it was written. Noncommittal as it had need to be--filled with home
items to the last page--there his heart stood still, to bound again
furiously back, and his breath came sharp and hot. He rose blinded and
staggering. Jim Murphy, seeing how white and rigid his face had grown,
came toward him, putting out his hand with a dumb impulse of sympathy,
not understanding how the shock of a great hope, springing full grown
into existence, sometimes puts on the semblance of as great a loss.

Private Moore's application for a furlough being duly made, that night
was duly granted.

'Just in time--the last one for your regiment!' said the good-natured
official, registering the necessary items.

In another hour he was whirling away, and in early evening two days
later he stepped out into the