come to him--awake and asleep--and it was genuine.




VI


It was mid-May now, and the leaves were full and their points were
drooping toward the earth. The woods were musical with the cries of
blackbirds as Crittenden drove toward the pike-gate, and the meadow was
sweet with the love-calls of larks. The sun was fast nearing the zenith,
and air and earth were lusty with life. Already the lane, lined with
locust-trees, brambles, wild rose-bushes, and young elders, was fragrant
with the promise of unborn flowers, and the turnpike, when he neared
town, was soft with the dust of many a hoof and wheel that had passed
over it toward the haze of smoke which rose over the first recruiting
camp in the State for the Spanish war. There was a big crowd in the
lovely woodland over which hung the haze, and the music of horn and drum
came forth to Crittenden's ears even that far away, and Raincrow raised
head and tail and quickened his pace proudly.

For a week he had drilled at Chickamauga. He had done the work of a
plain soldier, and he liked it--liked his temporary comrades, who were
frankly men to men with him, in spite of his friendship with their
superiors on top of the hill. To the big soldier, Abe Long, the wag of
the regiment, he had been drawn with genuine affection. He liked Abe's
bunkie, the boy Sanders, who was from Maine, while Abe was a
Westerner--the lineal descendant in frame, cast of mind, and character
of the border backwoodsman of the Revolution. Reynolds was a bully, and