FORE:Even through the pressure of official duties and responsibilities there would steal, like the wafting of a sweet song to the ears of the reapers in a hot field, thoughts of the coolness, the beauty and the peace of that quiet home on the Wabash, with one flower-faced girl, with white, soft arms, going about her daily tasks, singing with such blithe cheeriness that even the birds stopped to listen to a sweeter note than theirs. Some subtle fragrance from her seemed to be with him wherever he was, and whatever he might be doing. When, as the tallest Corporal in Co. Q, he stood on the right of the company, on drill and dress parade, and made the others "dress" on him, he wished that Maria Klegg could only see how straight the line was, and how soldierly the boys looked. When the Colonel personally selected him to command the squad which was to escort the Paymaster through a dangerous part of the country, he would have given much had Maria known of the trust reposed in him. And when, as Corporal of the Guard, he suppressed in his usual summary way a noisy row among the teamsters and cooks, he was very glad that Maria did not hear the remarks that a Corporal always thinks necessary to make on such occasions. Shorty did not swear with the fluent ease of before his visit to the Klegg homestead, but a little excitement gave the old looseness to his tongue. And when he sat around the guard-fire, he would refuse to be drawn into any "little games," but turn his back upon the chattering crowd, and furtively draw from his breast-pocket the remnant of Maria's dress, and feel it, and muse over it, until aroused by the call:The Deacon had just remembered that he had not seen that individual for some little time, and looked around for him with some concern. It was well that he did. Shorty had come across the haversack that the Deacon had brought, and it awakened all his old predatory instincts, sharpened, if anything, by his feebleness. Without saying a word to any body, he had employed the time while the Surgeon and Deacon were in conversation in preparing one of his customary gorges after a long, hard march.
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