[Illustration: 8051] “Wonder {043}if that means fight?” soliloquized Ralph. “The lads say he is a smart lawyer, but I don't know as that proves him to be a good fighter.” Ralph wrote often to that dear mother who was praying for her boy. “We move to the front to-morrow,” so his letter ran. “I know how fond you are of your boy. I am going to do my duty, I believe. But is it not an awful thought that it is no foreign foe we shall meet, but our own people?--that is the sting in it to me.” [Illustration: 8051] The night before the battle the boys slept as calmly as if they were at home. At dawn they were called to march, and after an attack upon their rations, they began the advance into Virginia. Raw and undisciplined, they did not accept the gravity of the situation. They marched along, light-hearted and gay, enjoying the change from quiet camp life with all the zest of school boys. Many of them fell out of the ranks and picked the luscious berries growing thickly by the wayside, while others wastefully tossed out the water in their {044}canteens and filled them with fresh every time they came to one of the springs which abounded in that beautiful and fertile region. “This isn't hard work,” Ralph thought. “We are having more fun than ever.” A halt had been called for a few moments' rest. A few rods from the road a dark stream ran slowly by, whose depths no one knew. A swim in its cool waters was proposed at any hazard, and, quickly disrobing, some of the younger ones plunged in, and were having a merry time, when the roll of the drum was heard and the marching was resumed. Here was a fix! The army began to move, and a dozen soldiers were still in the stream, who snatched up the first garments they saw and hastened to dress. In their confusion they had almost to a man seized the wrong clothes, and the fit of some of them was ludicrous. But changes were quickly made, and after much good-natured “chaffing” they fell into line, and were as sedate and soldierlike as any “vet” among them. The cry, “On to Richmond!” sounded throughout the land. Officers and soldiers had been massed near Washington long enough, and the people, as well as the boys in blue, were impatient tor some results, now that an army had been called into being. The soldiers pined for action; the people were anxious to know what would be the outcome. “Who commands the Southerners?” Ralph asked old “Bill” Elliott, a soldier who had taken quite a fancy to the boy, and was ready to answer his questions at all times. “Beauregard, the same chap who opened fire on Fort Sumter.” “And what does he propose doing now?” “Well, as I am not in his confidence, I can't just tell you, but I 'low we're not going to be in the dark long, neither are we likely to be the gainers by any move he makes if he can help it. He's got some thirty thousand men with him, and we'll have a lively time soon, you bet.”