A tall youth emerged from the dusk and looked at them inquiringly.

"Ohio," said Pennington, "don't you remember your friends?"

The long, lean lad looked again, and then he was enthusiastically shaking
hands with each in turn.

"Remember you!" he exclaimed. "Of course I do. If it hadn't been so
dark I'd have seen you and called to you first. I'm glad you're alive.
It's a lot to live in these times. I tried to find out about you fellows
but couldn't. We came in a detachment ahead of you. But if you'll
invite me, I'll stay awhile with you and talk."

They offered him a blanket and he stretched out upon it, turning his eyes
up to the sky, in which the stars were now coming.

"What are you thinking about, Ohio?" asked Dick.

"I'm thinking how fast I'm growing old. Two years and a half in the war,
but it's twenty-five years in fact. I hadn't finished school when I left
home and here I am, a veteran of more battles than any soldiers have
fought since the days of old Bonaparte. If I happen to live through
this war, which I mean to do, I wonder how I'll ever settle down at home
again. Father will say to me: 'Get the plough and break up the five-acre
field for corn,' and me, maybe a veteran of a dozen pitched battles in
every one of which anywhere from one hundred thousand to two hundred
thousand men have been engaged, not to mention fifty or a hundred smaller
battles and four or five hundred skirmishes.

"When the flies begin to buzz around me I'll think they make a mighty