CHAPTER II.
STONEWALL JACKSON’S WAY.
The months rolled on, the battle of Manassas had been fought and won, and the Federals, driven back upon Washington in hopeless rout, with the immediate result that thousands of volunteers left the Confederate service and returned to their homes and their ordinary vocations, thinking that an enemy so easily whipped could be as easily finished off without their further help. Many officers, too, who had hastened to the front at the first call of the trumpet, leaving their plantations or their businesses to look after themselves, gladly took advantage of the temporary lull to snatch a short furlough. Among these latter was Major Markham, who since the first sudden rush upon Harper’s Ferry in April had never once left the field. Now, however, a wound received at Bull Run incapacitating him from further service for the present, he rejoined his wife and son at Markham Hall.
The picturesque descriptions which his father gave him of the leading features of the battle, along with many incidents of personal adventure and heroism, so fired Lucius’s already ardent spirit, that from that time onwards he lived in imagination the life of a soldier. He begged, he prayed, he implored, he even went on his knees to his father to allow him to join the army as a drummer-boy, as a bugler, as a mule-driver, as anything at all, in any capacity whatsoever. Major Markham laughed at his son at first, but when he realised how absolutely in earnest Lucius was, he bade him, with what show of sternness he could muster—for he could not but admire the boy’s high spirit—never to mention the subject again.
Thwarted at home, Lucius sought consolation from his friend Ephraim, and so worked upon his slower nature with tales of deeds of daring, drawn almost entirely from his own perfervid imagination, that even Grizzly was stirred to enthusiasm, and flourished his long arms over his head as he declared his intention of annihilating whole regiments of Yankees at one fell blow, by means of some devastating compound, the first idea of which was germinating in his fertile brain.
At the same time, Ephraim’s common sense stood both him and Lucius in good stead, and held the younger boy back more effectually than the commands of his father or the pleadings of his mother. But when Major Markham rejoined his regiment in December, to take part in the terrible expedition to Romney, Lucius could bear the restraint no longer, and one cold, snowy night he astonished Ephraim by suddenly appearing and boldly proposing that they should run away together.
‘Whar ye gwine ter run ter?’ inquired common-sense Ephraim, looking up from the calculations on which he was engaged.
‘How do I know?’ flashed Lucius the fervid. ‘We’ll just go on until we come to one of our armies. They’ll be mighty glad to let us join.’