As the train whirled away Si made an excuse to go away from Shorty, and standing up under the lamp in the next car he read on a tear-stained sheet:
"Deer Si: I wanted so much to tel you, but the words
wooddent come to my lips, that Ime yours til deth, no matter
what happens, and Ime shure you feel the saim way. Annabel."
Coming back with his heart in a tumult of rapture, he found his partner fast asleep and even snoring.
CHAPTER XIV. THE FRISKY YOUNGSTERS
TRYING TO LICK A BATCH OF RECRUITS INTO SHAPE.
FOR awhile the tumult of thought kept Si awake, but he was too young, healthy, and tired for this to last long, and soon he had his head pillowed on his blanket-roll, placed in the open car-window, and was sleeping too sound to even dream of Annabel, while the rushing train pelted his face with cinders from the engine and a hail of gravel from the road-bed. But what was that to a soldier-boy who had been home, seen his best girl, and had one of his mother's square meals?
When the train rolled into Jeffersonville in the afternoon, they saw Lieut. Bowersox on the platform anxiously waiting for them. His face lighted up with pleasure when he saw them, and eagerly coming forward he said:
"Great Cesar, boys, but I'm glad you've come. I've been waiting for you all day. Rush orders came last night to send everybody to the front. I guess they are in need of every gun they can get. I should have gone last night, but I managed to stave off my orders till now. If you hadn't come on this train, though, I should 've had to go on with out you. Hurry along, now. We are going right across the river."
Despite the Lieutenant's urgency, Si found time to hand him a jar of honey and a small crock of butter from their home supplies, which he received with proper appreciation, and handed over to the grinning negro boy he had picked up somewhere in Tennessee for a servant. They followed the Lieutenant to where he had his squad of about 100 recruits gathered. He said: