The colors went sweeping by, flaunting in the sunshine despite the besmirching dust, and the seventh company came swinging along, and all of a sudden a wiry-looking sergeant file-closer glanced up and shouted, "Hullo, Snipey! How are _you_?" after the Bowery fashion of the day. "Hullo, Snipey!" came the greeting from half a dozen brawny throats. "Say, sonny, did you git square with that Metamora gang before you come away?" "Hullo, Snipe! Where's Shorty all dis time?" "Say, boy, what deestrick d'you run to now?" And before anybody could say a word to prevent it, half a dozen laughing, rollicking fellows sprang from the ranks and were crowding about Lawton as he sat blushing, half pleased, half ashamed, and shaking the lad by the hand. "Come over and see us when we git to camp," they cried in chorus, as, clamping their heavy sword-bayonets to their sides with the left hand, and trailing the brown barrels of their "special" rifles, they hurried on to catch their company. It was all over in a minute, but the New-Englanders looked curiously at the major's orderly, and that quiet-mannered, taciturn officer finally turned, with something like a smile. "One would hardly say those fellows could have brought you ill news, Lawton. They seem like old friends." "I knew them well when at school in New York, sir." "Who is Shorty?" "He was my chum, sir. I thought he'd be here long ago. He was a drummer in the Seventy-first New York. His relatives wouldn't let him come, I suppose." "Would yours, do you think,--if they knew?" "No, sir. But my father's been dead a long time. My mother married again, and--I've been shifting for myself of late." "I understand," said the major, inclining his head; "but does your mother know now?" "I write to her every month, sir. She knows I'm with the army. They would get me out if they knew where to find me, but I should enlist in another regiment under another name, so what would be the use?"