"Oh, they stay in camp. We don't treat 'em bad, without they be spies. There's a batch at camp now, got in this evening—sort o' Christmas-gift." The soldier laughed as he stamped his feet to keep warm.
"Where's your camp?" Bob asked.
"About a mile from here, right on the road, or rather right on the hill at the edge o' the pines 'yond the crick."
The boy left him, and sauntered in and out among the other men who were building a fire in the yard. Presently he moved on to the edge of the lawn beyond them. No one took further notice of him. In a second he had slipped through the gate, and was flying across the field. He knew every foot of the ground as well as a hare, for he had been hunting and setting traps over it since he was as big as little Charlie. He had to make a detour at the creek to avoid the picket at the bridge, and the dense briers in the bottom were very bad and painful. However, he worked his way through, though his face and hands were severely scratched. Into the creek he plunged. "Outch!" He had stepped into a hole up to his waist, and the water was as cold as ice. However, he was soon through, and at the top of the hill he could see the glow of the camp-fires lighting up the sky.
He crept up cautiously, and saw the dark forms of the sentinels pacing backward and forward wrapped in their overcoats, now lit up by the fire, then growing black against its blazing embers, then lit up again, and passing away into the shadow. How could he ever get by them? His heart began to beat and his teeth to chatter, but he walked boldly up.
"Halt! who goes there?" cried the sentry, bringing his gun down and advancing on him.
Bob kept on, and the sentinel, finding that it was only a boy, looked rather sheepish. To the men about the camp-fire his appearance was the signal for fun.
"Don't let him capture you, Jim," called one of them; "Call the Corporal of the Guard," another; "Order up the reserves," a third. "He's a Christmas-gift for you; I'm going to put him in your stocking," laughed one. "It's big enough to hold him," said another.
Bob had to undergo something of an examination. Where had he come from?
"I know the little Johnny," said one of the men. "He lives over in the white house on the hill to that side of the creek."