"I swan to man, ef it ain't old Buckley!"
Seth was right. It was the Maryland secessionist whose turkeys the boys had stolen, and who, in consequence, had made haste to avenge his wrongs by joining the confederate army.
A strange, sickening sensation came over Frank at the discovery. Thus the evil he had done followed him. But for that wild freak of plundering the poor man's poultry-yard, he might be plodding now on his Maryland farm, and Atwater would not be lying there so white and still with a bullet in his breast.
"VICTORY OR DEATH."
Where all this time was the old drum-major? He too had disappeared from the ambulance corps to assume, like Frank, a position of still more arduous service and greater danger.
Shortly after Frank left him, word came that the battery of boat-howitzers, which, from a curve in the road that commanded the rebel works, had been doing splendid execution, was suffering terribly, and getting short of hands. It must soon withdraw unless reinforced. But who would volunteer to help work the guns?
The old man had been familiar with artillery practice. At the thought of the service and the peril his spirit grew proud within him. But his heart yearned for Frank.
"Where is Manly?" he inquired of Ellis.
"I believe he has gone into the fight with our company," said the wounded volunteer.