She was young and pretty. Coffin swept off his cap. "That's the reason we're trying to get to the edge of town—to help the men with the wagon train."
Her eyes grew luminous. "How brave you are! Go, and God bless you!"
The two ran on. Mathew Coffin added another line to his letter: "A lady besought me to enter her house, saying that I would surely be killed, and that she could conceal me until the enemy was gone. But I—"
They were nearly out of town—they could see the long train hurriedly moving on the Staunton road. There was a sudden burst of musketry. A voice reached them from the street below. "Halt, you two Confeds running there! Come on over here! Rally to the colours!" There was a flash of the stars and bars, waved vigorously. "Oh, ha, ha!" cried Billy, "thar was some of us wasn't taken! Aren't you glad we didn't stay behind the cowshed?"
It came into Coffin's head that Billy might tell that his sergeant had wished to stay behind the cowshed. The blood rushed to his face; he saw the difficulty of impressing men who knew about the cowshed with his abilities in the way of storming batteries single-handed. He had really a very considerable share of physical courage, and naturally he esteemed it something larger than it was. He began to burn with the injustice of Billy Maydew's thinking him backward in daring and so reporting him around camp-fires. As he ran he grew angrier and angrier, and not far from the shaken flag, in a little grassy hollow which hid them from view, he called upon the other to halt. Billy's sense of discipline brought him to a stop, but did not keep him from saying, "What for?" They were only two soldiers, out of the presence of others and in a pretty tight place together—Mathew Coffin but three years older than he, and no great shakes anyhow. "What for?" asked Billy.
"I just want to say to you," said Coffin thickly, "that as to that shed, it was my duty to protect my men; just as it is my duty as an officer to report you for disobedience and bad language addressed to an officer—"
Billy's brow clouded. "I had forgotten all about that. I was going along very nicely with you. You were really behaving yourself—like a—like a gentleman. The cow-house was all right. You are brave enough when it comes to fighting. And now you're bringing it all up again—"
"'Gentleman.'—Who are you to judge of a gentleman?"
Billy looked at him calmly. "I air one of them.—I air a-judging from that-a stand."
"You are going to the guardhouse for disobedience and bad language and impertinence."