"Never mind that, uncle," added Somers, laughing. "It would hardly be good discipline for a sergeant to call an officer by a nickname; but we will compromise, and you shall call me Tom when we are not on duty, and there is no one within hearing." "Compromise! Don't never use that word to me. After we fit the battle of Bull Run, I gouged that word out of my dictionary. No, sir! You are a leftenant now; and I shall allus call you Leftenant Somers, even if there ain't nobody within ten mile of us." "Just as you please, uncle; but, whatever you call me, we shall be just as good friends as we ever were." "That's so, Leftenant Somers." "Precisely, Sergeant Hapgood." "Now, what's the news in Pinchbrook?" asked the veteran. But, before Somers had a chance to tell the news from home, he was welcomed to the camp, and cheered, by officers and men; and his account of what had transpired in Pinchbrook during his thirty days' furlough was eagerly listened to by a large and attentive audience. He received in return a full history of the regiment during his absence. Though the narrative of sundry exciting events, such as forays upon pig-sties, poultry-yards, and kitchen-gardens, was highly amusing, there was a tale of sadness to tell--of deaths by disease and on the battlefield. Many cheerful hearts that were beating with life and hope a few weeks before, were now silent in the grave--the soldier's mausoleum in a strange land. But soldiers have no time to weep over a dead past; they must live in the hope of a glorious future; and when they had dropped a tear to the memory of the noble and the true who had fallen on the field or died in the hospital, victims of the pestilential airs of the swamp, they laughed as merrily as ever, careless of Death's poised arrows which were always aimed at them. Captain de Banyan took his place in the regiment, where Somers found that he was prodigiously popular, even after a few hours' acquaintance with his new command; but who he was, where he came from, and how he had procured his commission, was a mystery to officers and men. He told tremendous stories about the Crimea and the Italian war; and now for the first time intimated that he was the only survivor of the company which led the advance at the storming of Chapultepec, in the Mexican war. However much the officers enjoyed his stories, it is not probable that all of them believed what they heard.