"They've had an unlucky birthday," he said, not inaptly, and rather courteously, as he took them. "Yes, my gloves heretofore have all been spoiled by the sabre," I replied, keeping step with his charger. "I don't know but that you have to thank a drunken guard for the pair, Sir; since he threatened to kill me, if I kept them on my hands." He gave a hasty look for his orderly. "Point out the man, if you can, Sir," he said to me, and beckoned a trooper to his side. "I am obliged to you for your interference," I answered. "The man marches third on the left there, and has his piece slung behind him. I hope that some day, Sir, I may do you a favor." A sense of humor, for which I must be grateful, considering the sombre dejection of my marching mates, filled my breast as I thanked him for putting one under guard for attempting (drunk) what he himself so soberly accomplished,--the capture of my buckskins. He kept the gauntlets very willingly, and ordered a sergeant to accompany me. But there was generosity and magnificence in his action; the acquisition, per duress, of others' property was a daily habit with him,--and to have a sergeant for a guard was a considerable favor. It was my desire to cultivate the Sergeant thus cast within my reach, who otherwise might be a marplot, and who had good of some sort in him, I judged from his appearance; although, as with his kind, it was evidently very barren winter in his purse, and his summer clothes were apparently too open. His butternut jacket, a poor tweed with a cotton filling, was clasped about his throat with a shred of twine, flying away thence loosely, showing a dirty cotton shirt beneath, and the rough edge of the waistband of his pantaloons. The material of which these last were made was a very impressible jean, and marked the number of his journeys, could one but decipher them, in stains and intricate creases. He had the same face of lifeless suet, and the yellow hair, that I have noticed as very prevalent in the Rebel armies,--but withal an elasticity of carriage that seemed too honest for the cause, an almost openness of countenance, a cast of features tending towards amiability, which imbued me with a trembling hope. I had designs upon the Sergeant, and intended opening upon him with rhetoric, after, perhaps, some amicable skirmishing. His detail to guard my person was a compliment to me which only the initiated--those who have made the same journey--can appreciate. The young provost-officer with the sleeve-knots desired to offer me a delicate attention in return for my hand-furniture, and, perhaps, to impress me in some sort with his sense of right, even though he was of so wrong-headed a company. What a dainty, dew-sipping bunch of violets would be to conscious beauty,--what a quaint volume of old matter, dust-breeding and crumbling, would be to the blinking scholar,--what refined gold, or gold ore, or gold stamped in the mint,