"Tom, you are a little fool!" added the veteran, petulantly. "Are you going with cold feet just to please a silly gal, whose head is as full of moonshine as an egg is of meat. Put on the socks, and keep your feet warm. If you don't, I'll write to her, and tell what a fool you are." Tom did put them on, but he could not help feeling that uncle Hapgood, as he was familiarly called in the camp, did not understand and appreciate his sentiments. The socks seemed to be too precious to be worn in the vulgar mud of Maryland. To him there was something ethereal about them, and it looked a little like profanation to put any thing emanating from the fairy fingers of the original of that photograph, and the author of that letter, upon his feet. "Now you act like a sensible fellow, as you are, Tom," said Hapgood, as the sergeant put on his army brogans. "Well, uncle, one thing is certain: I never will run away from the rebels with these socks on," added Tom, with a rich glow of enthusiasm. "If Gen'l McClennon don't stir his stumps pretty soon, you'll wear 'em out afore you git a chance to run away." Tom, almost for the first time since he had been in the army, wanted to be alone. With those socks on, it seemed just as though he was walking the streets of the New Jerusalem, with heaven and stacks of silver-fringed and golden-tinged clouds beneath his feet, buried up to the eyes in floods of liquid moonshine. If "grandma" really thought that Lilian Ashford was a silly girl, and if Lilian really supposed so herself, it must be added, in justification of her conduct, that she had given the soldier boy a new incentive to do his duty nobly, and kindled in his soul a holy aspiration to serve God and his country with renewed zeal and fidelity. CHAPTER XXVII. THE CONFEDERATE DESERTER. While Tom was in the hospital, he received a letter from his sister, informing him that his brother John had actually entered the navy, and with his mother's consent. The news from home was so favorable, that the soldier boy was pleased to hear that Jack had realized his darling wish, and that he was now in his element. Intelligence from home, accompanied with letters, papers, books, comforts, and luxuries of various kinds, reached him every two or three weeks; and when the news went back that Tom had been made a sergeant for gallant conduct, there was a great sensation in Pinchbrook. The letters which reached him after the receipt of this gratifying announcement contained all the gossip of the place in regard to the important event. Of course, Tom was delighted by these letters, and was more than ever determined to be diligent and faithful in the discharge of his duties, and never to disgrace the name he bore. He was confident his friends would never have occasion to blush for his conduct--including the original of the photograph, the author of the letter and of the socks.