"I say, let's go and capture that old beast. What a lark it would be to drive him before us into the line in the morning and make the boys think we had taken a prisoner!"
"No, sir," I replied; "we don't know where the enemy's skirmishers are, but I for one am just as near them as I want to be!"
It was well for Joe that he had a more cautious comrade with him, for he yielded at last to the counsels of manifest prudence; but all night long he looked at that old white horse with longing eyes.
We had not more than safely reached our company in the morning before the foe discovered himself, and the venerable oaks grew vocal with singing bullets; but I shall always cherish the memory of that risky but harmless adventure in Joe's dear company, for he and I were soon to part.
I have often wondered if the shadow of his fate did not even then come over him at times! Recklessly cheerful as he always was in the face of danger or difficulty, there were moments when, to me at least, he showed another mood. In those gloomy days after the tragedy of the first Fredericksburg, when the issue of the great conflict seemed doubtful, he said to me one day:—
"You and I are young men; life is all before us, but what will our lives be worth in this country if the South succeeds? For my part I do not mean to live to see it."
We had in our company a lot of very young fellows, some of them less than eighteen years old, whose ardent patriotism and willing courage and endurance shamed many of their elders. We were talking one day about the readiness of these bright boys to face death and danger, when Joe said very solemnly:
"Yes! the more a man's life is worth, the less he cares for it."
A year had passed since our summer night's adventure under the oaks, and Joe had been made a commissioned officer in another regiment. Men of ours, whose time had expired, flocked to him to re-enlist under his command, and his company was largely composed of old comrades. His next real service was in that memorable and bloody siege of Petersburg. I met him once during the winter; he had been at home on furlough and I have always suspected that he came away with a heart wound,—the only wound he ever received until he met his death. We were boys when first we were thrown together, and bashful about such things, and intimate as I afterwards became with him he was always reticent about his love-affairs; but I had a feeling that one fair girl at home could have told why Joe returned to his perilous duty robbed of that light-heartedness which used to diffuse itself about him like an atmosphere. Was it that, or was it the gloom of the apparently endless conflict which had entered his soul? I could never be quite sure.
He told me in curt phrase all about the position of his regiment close by that famous redoubt to which the soldiers had given the significant name of "Fort Hell," and then he said, "Some day, I think soon, Grant is going to break through those lines, and when he does, I am going to distinguish myself or get killed!"