gallant than he ever vaulted into saddle to do battle for the right.
He went into the Army solely as a matter of principle, and did his duty
with the unflagging zeal of an olden Puritan fighting for liberty and his
soul's salvation. He was a superb horseman--as all the older Illinoisans
are and, for all his two-score years and ten, he recognized few superiors
for strength and activity in the Battalion. A radical, uncompromising
Abolitionist, he had frequently asserted that he would rather die than
yield to a Rebel, and he kept his word in this as in everything else.

As for him, it was probably the way he desired to die. No one believed
more ardently than he that

Whether on the scaffold high,
Or in the battle's van;
The fittest place for man to die,
Is where he dies for man.

Among the many who had lost chums and friends was Ned Johnson, of Company
K. Ned was a young Englishman, with much of the suggestiveness of the
bull-dog common to the lower class of that nation. His fist was readier
than his tongue. His chum, Walter Savage was of the same surly type.
The two had come from England twelve years before, and had been together
ever since. Savage was killed in the struggle for the fence described in
the preceding chapter. Ned could not realize for a while that his friend
was dead. It was only when the body rapidly stiffened on its icy bed,
and the eyes which had been gleaming deadly hate when he was stricken
down were glazed over with the dull film of death, that he believed he
was gone from him forever. Then his rage was terrible. For the rest of
the day he was at the head of every assault upon the enemy. His voice
could ever be heard above the firing, cursing the Rebels bitterly, and