trousers much too short, and an
absorbed, abstracted demeanor. Can it be Horace, reporting for himself?
No; this is a Maryland production, and a little disposed to be sulky.

After a few minutes' halt, we hear the whistle of the engine. This
machine is also an historic character in the war.

Remember it! "J.H. Nicholson" is its name. Charles Homans drives, and
on either side stands a sentry with fixed bayonet. New spectacles for
America! But it is grand to know that the bayonets are to protect, not
to assail, Liberty and Law.

The train leads off. We follow, by the track. Presently the train
returns. We pass it and trudge on in light marching order, carrying
arms, blankets, haversacks, and canteens. Our knapsacks are upon the
train.

Fortunate for our backs that they do not have to bear any more burden!
For the day grows sultry. It is one of those breezeless baking days
which brew thunder-gusts. We march on for some four miles, when, coming
upon the guards of the Massachusetts Eighth, our howitzer is ordered to
fall out and wait for the train. With a comrade of the Artillery, I am
placed on guard over it.

ON GUARD WITH HOWITZER NO. TWO.

Henry Bonnell is my fellow-sentry. He, like myself, is an old campaigner
in such campaigns as our generation has known. So we talk California,
Oregon, Indian life, the Plains, keeping our eyes peeled meanwhile, and
ranging the country. Men that will tear up track are quite capable of
picking off a sentry. A giant chestnut gives us little dots of shade
from its pigmy leaves. The country about us is open and newly ploughed.
Some of the worm-fences are new, and ten rails high; but the farming is
careless, and the soil thin.

Two of the Massachusetts men come back to the gun while we are standing
there. One is my friend Stephen Morris, of Marblehead, Sutton Light
Infantry. I had shared my breakfast yesterday with Stephe. So we
refraternize.

His business is,--"I make shoes in winter and fishin' in summer." He
gives me a few facts,--suspicious persons seen about the track, men on
horseback in the distance. One of the Massachusetts guard last night
challenged his captain. Captain replied, "Officer of the night"
Whereupon, says Stephe, "The recruit let squizzle and jest missed his
ear." He then related to me the incident of the railroad station. "The
first thing they know'd," says he, "we bit right into the depot and took
charge." "I don't mind," Stephe remarked,--"I don't mind