Bob shook his head and laughed. "I am to get back to my command by daylight, Uncle Clem," said he, "and I know that if I should trade horses with you, I'd have to walk." "What nonsense. I want to see you on a good horse. Come on." "No, I thank you." "Let me show you the mare." "Don't want to see her." "She's a beauty--got her from General Buell." "Take her back to him. I don't want her." "All right," he said, with a loud laugh, "Got your eye teeth, haven't you. Well--what was that? A bugle." "Come," said Bob, starting toward the door. But he halted. "Uncle Clem, give my love to them all. Tell the old man that I love him." CHAPTER XXVIII. The days fell dark for the Confederacy. It seemed that the whole world had sprung up in arms against the South. Stronghold after stronghold was taken, and Richmond itself was threatened. No hope was left to illumine the soldier's heart; he had followed a bright phantom, year after year, expecting it to lead him out of the wilderness, but he was becoming deeper and more darkly involved in the thicket, and now the phantom was fading. In his haversack, he carried roasted acorns and pieces of sugar-cane, and his enemies, in blood his brothers, shook their heads and marveled at his courage, for he was just as ready to fight as he had been on the morning after Bull Run. To face death at morning, to shed his blood at noon, to lie down supperless upon the wet ground at night, was a duty that he was not there to question, but to discharge. One night my master and I occupied a room in a deserted farm-house near Richmond. About us lay a broken army and the scattered fragments of a civilization. "A few more days will settle it, I think, Dan," he said. Sitting on a box, with one leg drawn up and with his hands clasped over his knee, he was gazing at the lightwood sputtering in the fire-place, and upon his thoughtful countenance a black shadow and a yellow light alternately arose and fell. "Only a few more days and most of us may be shot or permitted to go home. Who would have believed that we could have gone through such a time since Jane stood on the stile-block waving the silk flag she had made for me. And I can't carry even a scrap of it back to her. Do you know one thing that I'm going to do if I'm permitted to go home?" he asked, his face brightening. "I am going to acknowledge to father that I was wrong, not in fighting so hard after I got in, but in permitting a glamour to blind me in the first place. The most gigantic mistake of the age. I was like you, Dan. I followed my heart rather than my judgment. But you are free. I am your master no longer. Don't turn away. I don't reproach you; I congratulate you. If any man deserves freedom, you do. Better spread the blankets and let's try to get a little sleep. We need no alarm clock to wake us up. Brother Ulysses with his cannon will see to that."