Blakely eyed the man homicidally for a moment, and then, smiling one of those smiles of simulated gayety which the novelists inform us are more tragic than tears, turned upon him with withering irony. “Trust you left the old folks pretty comfortable?” “Dead.” “The old folks dead!” “Quite so.” Blakely made a sudden dive for his blanket, tucked it around him with painful precision, and was heard no more. Just then the bugle sounded “lights out,”--bugle answering bugle in far-off camps. When our not elaborate night-toilets were complete, Strong threw somebody else's old boot at the candle with infallible aim, and darkness took possession of the tent. Ned, who lay on my left, presently reached over to me, and whispered, “I say, our friend 'quite so' is a garrulous old boy! He'll talk himself to death some of these odd times, if he is n't careful. How he _did_ run on!” The next morning, when I opened my eyes, the new member of Mess 6 was sitting on his knapsack, combing his blonde beard with a horn comb. He nodded pleasantly to me, and to each of the boys as they woke up, one by one. Blakely did not appear disposed to renew the animated conversation of the previous night; but while he was gone to make a requisition for what was in pure sarcasm called coffee, Curtis ventured to ask the man his name. “Bladburn, John,” was the reply. “That's rather an unwieldy name for every-day use,” put in Strong. “If it would n't hurt your feelings, I 'd like to call you Quite So--for short. Don't say no, if you don't like it. Is it agreeable?” Bladburn gave a little laugh, all to himself, seemingly, and was about to say, “Quite so,” when he caught at the words, blushed like a girl, and nodded a sunny assent to Strong. From that day until the end, the sobriquet clung to him. The disaster at Bull Bun was followed, as the reader knows, by a long period of masterly inactivity, so far as the Army of the Potomac was concerned. McDowell, a good soldier, but unlucky, retired to Arlington Heights, and McClellan, who had distinguished himself in Western Virginia, took command of the forces in front of Washington, and bent his energies to reorganizing the demoralized troops. It was a dreary time to the people of the North, who looked fatuously from week to week for “the fall of Richmond;” and it was a dreary time to the denizens of that vast city of tents and forts which stretched in a semicircle before the beleaguered Capitol--so tedious and soul-wearing a time that the hardships of forced marches and the horrors of battle became desirable things to them.