* * * * * That night, late, it occurred to some one that it might be well to go up and see Shorty and try to reason with him and comfort him, or "do something," as it was vaguely expressed. The room door was wide open, the dinner stood untasted on the tray, the tray was on the bed, and Shorty was gone. CHAPTER XV. It was a starlit summer night following a day of moist, debilitating heat. It had rained at dawn, and then, as the clouds of heaven broke away and went sailing off towards the distant heights on the western horizon, the sun had poured hotly down on open fields and sodden red roads and long rows of wet, white tentage, veiling the landscape with miniature clouds from the teeming earth. All day long soldiers innumerable lolled about the camps and thronged the sentry-posts that lined the roadway, chaffing the passers-by or dickering with darky vendors of fruit, cakes, and pies,--amateur soldiers were these, as any veteran could tell at a glance, some in gayly trimmed regimentals, some in antiquated tail-coats, more in fancy jackets, few in serviceable garb, and nearly all with their hands in their pockets. A bored, jaded, time-killing lot they looked. The ground was too wet and muddy for drill. The first flush of patriotic fervor had worn away. They had rushed to the front at the earliest call, expectant of tremendous doings, and, except the street-fight of the Sixth Massachusetts in Baltimore and a few shots heard at the picket-posts, there had been no taste of battle. They were the three-months men, mainly State militia, hurried down to hold Washington against attack, while the volunteers, the "three-years men" of the war, were organizing and drilling behind them. Their three months had nearly expired, and most of them were eager to go home so long as there was nothing going on at the front. Some, indeed, were ready to go anyhow, many with the promise of commissions in the volunteers, many with the resolve to re-enlist for the war, but all anxious to visit home and friends and families and get a more deliberate start than that initial impulse which sent them forward the latter part of April, burdened with knapsacks they knew not how to pack or wear and guns that they had never shot. And here, along the main pike to Fairfax and Centreville, one on each side of the way, a New York and a New England regiment of militia had been swapping comments and criticisms most of the afternoon, badgering each other when there came no one else to bear the brunt of their shafts, and mischievously turning with one accord on passers-by whose lack of rank or escort suggested improbability of effective resentment.