The steamer having arrived, the soldiers shook hands with their friends
again, went on board, and, amid the hearty cheers of the citizens of
Pinchbrook, were borne down the bay.




CHAPTER X.

COMPANY K.


Tom Somers felt that he was now a soldier indeed. While the company
remained in Pinchbrook, he had slept every night in his own bed, and taken
his meals in the kitchen of the little cottage. He fully realized that he
had bade a long farewell to all the comforts and luxuries of home. That
day, for the first time, he was to partake of soldiers' fare, and that
night, for the first time, he was to sleep upon a soldier's bed. These
thoughts did not make him repine, for before he signed the muster roll, he
had carefully considered, with the best information he could obtain, what
hardships and privations he would be called to endure. He had made up his
mind to bear all things without a murmur for the blessed land of his
birth, which now called upon her sons to defend her from the parricidal
blow of the traitor.

Tom had not only made up his mind to bear all these things, but to bear
them patiently and cheerfully. He had a little theory of his own, that
rather more than half of the discomforts of this mortal life exist only in
the imagination. If he only _thought_ that every thing was all right, it