A light footstep sounded on the springy board floor, nimble fingers worked a moment at the cords, then the flap was thrown open and the adjutant's office stood partially revealed. It was a big wall tent backed up against another of the same size and pattern. Half a dozen plain chairs, two rough board tables littered with books, papers and smoking tobacco, an oil stove and a cheap clothes rack on which were hanging raincoats, ponchos and a cape or two, comprised all the furniture. In a stout frame of unplaned wood, cased in their oilskins and tightly rolled, stood the colors of the famous regiment; and back of them, well within the second tent where one clerk was just lighting a camp lantern, were perched on rough tables a brace of field desks with the regimental books. The sergeant-major, a veteran of years of service in the regulars, sat at one of them. A young soldier, he who had unfastened the tent flap to admit Lieutenant Gray, was just returning to his seat at the other. Two orderlies lounged on a bench well beyond and back of the sergeant-major's seat, and a bugler, with his hands in his pockets, was smoking a short brier-root pipe at the opposite or back doorway. Woe to the enlisted men who sought the presence of the colonel or adjutant through any other channel. The sergeant-major would drop on him with the force of a baseball bat. "Who all are over yahnduh at the chief's?" asked the adjutant, as soon as he had his visitor well inside, and the soft accent as well as the quaint phraseology told that in the colonel's confidential staff officer a Southerner spoke. "All the brigade and most regimental commanders 'cept ours, I should say, and they seem to be waiting for them. Can't we send?" was the answer, as the junior whipped off his campaign hat and sprinkled the floor with the vigorous shakes he gave the battered felt. "Have sent," said his entertainer briefly, as he filled a pipe from the open tobacco box and struck a safety match. "Orderly galloped after him ten minutes ago. Blow the brigade and battalion commanders! What I asked you was who are the women up there?" "No, you didn't! You said, 'who all are up yonder?' I'm a sub, and s'posed you meant _men_--soldiers--officers. What have I to do with anybody in petticoats?" "And I'm a grizzled vet of a dozen years' duty, crows' feet and gray hairs a-comin'," grinned the adjutant, pulling at a long curly mustache and drawing himself up to his full height of six feet, "and when you're as old as I am and half as wise, Billy, you'll know that a pretty girl is worth ten times the thought our old frumps of generals demand. My name ain't Gordon if I haven't a mind to waltz over there through the mist and the wind just to tell them I've sent for Squeers. Then I'll get a look at the girls." "I've got to go back," said Billy, "and you've no business to--with Mrs. Gordon and an interesting family to consider. What tent'd the ladies go to? _I_ didn't see 'em."