“I am very grateful, I assure you, for your kindness in this matter. I am strongly tempted to accept your offer, bu there are still stronger reasons why I should decline it.” “May I ask your reasons?” “My reasons for not accepting the appointment?” “Yes, the reasons which impel you to prefer a dinner of bitter herbs, under Mr. Alspaugh's usually soiled thumb, to a stalled ox and my profitable society,” said the Surgeon, gayly. Harry hesitated a moment, and then decided to speak frankly. “Yes,” he said, “your kindness gives you the right to know. To not tell you would show a lack of gratitude. I made a painful blunder before in not staying unflinchingly with my company. The more I think of it, the more I regret it, and the more I am decided not to repeat it, but abide with my comrades and share their fate in all things. I feel that I no longer have a choice in the matter; I must do it. But there goes the drum for roll-call. I must go. Good evening, and very many thanks.” “The young fellow's no callow milksop, after all,” said the Surgeon Denslow, as his eyes followed Harry's retreating form. “His gristle is hardening into something like his stern old father's backbone.” Chapter IX. On the March. “He smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the Captains and the shouting.” -- Job. The weary weeks in Camp of Instruction ended with the Summer. September had come, and Nature was hanging out crimson battle-flags every-where--on the swaying poppy and the heavy-odored geranium. The sumach and the sassafras wore crimson signals of defiance, and the maples blazed with the gaudy red, yellow and orange of warlike pomp. The regiment made its first step on Kentucky soil with a little bit of pardonable ostentation. Every one looked upon it as the real beginning of its military career. When the transport was securely tied up at the wharf, the Colonel mounted his horse, drew his sword, placed himself at the head of the regiment, and gave the command “Forward.” Eleven hundred superb young fellows, marching four abrest, with bayonets fixed, and muskets at “right shoulder shift,” strode up the bank after him and went into line of battle at the top, where he made a short soldierly speech, the drums rolled, the colors dipped, the men cheered, and the band played “Star-spangled Banner” and “Dixie.” Three years later the two hundred survivors of this number returning from their “Veteran furlough,” without a band and with their tattered colors carefully cased, came off a transport at the same place, without uttering a word other than a little grumbling at the trouble of disposing of some baggage, marched swiftly and silently up the bank, and disappeared before any one fairly realized that they were there. So much had Time and War taught them.