The army was then receiving almost weekly large batches of raw recruits, sent from the big cities, some the product of the draft, others forwarded by the enlistment bureaus. Among these new-comers were many good citizens and patriots; but there were also a great many cowards and a considerable number of scoundrels who made a business of enlisting to get the bounty, deserting as soon as they could, and enlisting again from some other point. To prevent wholesale desertions, both of the cowards and the "bounty-jumpers," the utmost vigilance was needed. Their best chance to run away was offered by picket duty, when they found themselves posted out in comparative solitude, in the dark, on the very outskirts of the army line. To checkmate this, a cordon of cavalry had to be drawn still farther out than the pickets--cavalry-men who slept all day, and at night patrolled the uttermost confines of the great camp, watching with all their eyes and ears, ready on the instant to clap spurs and ride down any skulking wretch who could be discovered attempting his escape. Even in the teeth of this precaution, the attempts were continually made, and it was the rarest event for a Friday to pass without the spectacle of summary punishment being meted out to some captured deserter on the corps' shooting-ground. Often there were more than one of these victims to martial law. Lafe now remembered how, with a boy's curiosity, he had prowled about the provost marshal's guard quarters, fascinated by the idea that inside the log shanty, where the two sentinels with fixed bayonets walked constantly up and down, there were men condemned to be shot at six the following morning. Standing around, and gossiping amiably with these sentinels, who shared the common feeling of the army in making pets of the drummer-boys, he had managed at last to get a glimpse at one of these fated prisoners. A face had appeared at the little window, square-cut in the logs. It was a bad, unkempt face, with a reddish stubble of beard on jaws and cheek. There may have been some rough jest passed by the other prisoners inside the hut, for as the boy watched this face, a grim, mean sort of smile flickered momentarily over it. Then the face itself disappeared, and left the boy marvelling that a man could grin in presence of the fact that he was to be shot on the morrow. The smile, and the countenance it played upon for that instant of time, burned themselves into his memory. Lafe racked his brain now for some recollection of having heard that these particular prisoners were reprieved, or had succeeded in escaping from their log jail. His memory was a blank on the subject. Yet he felt sure that the face he had seen at that window was the identical face he now saw before him. For the life of him, he could not resist the temptation to venture upon this dangerous topic.