"Well, you were mustered in about the same date we were. Don't some of your boys talk of going home, and wanting to?"
"Not—audibly," says Stark.
"Well, they must be thinking a lot. They are fixed pretty much as ours are," hazards a field-officer.
"Possibly," says Stark, tapping out the ashes on the leg of the camp-stool. "But we made no stipulation as to the duty to be required of us. We tendered our services and expect to take our chances."
"Do you mean your boys would all go, no matter how far south they were ordered?" asks a young officer who has already had much to say about his own.
"My men will go wherever they're ordered," answers Stark, briefly. "I haven't any boys, except one, and he's so much of a man I never found him out till we got here."
"That brown-eyed young fellow I've seen round your tent?" queries the colonel, deeming it wise to change the tenor of the talk.
"The very one."
"How'd you come to take him? He's too light built for heavy work. He's outgrown his strength and he don't look eighteen," says the major, glad enough to shift implied criticism to the rival regiment.
"Well, his employers said he was worth three men around the shop, and he was bound to go. The inspectors passed him, and there he was in my company."