tion to the matter than if the old couple had been a pair of toddling infants fretting over some imaginary trouble.
III
Now it happened that while Private Chadwick was enjoying his soup under the gentle auspices of the ladies who had invited him to be their guest, his comrades in the trenches and round about had received some news that seemed to them to be very bad indeed. It was in the shape of a rumor merely, but among soldiers a rumor is merely the forerunner of facts. The news was to the effect that General Johnston was about to be removed and General Hood put in his place. The news had not yet appeared in the newspapers, and it had reached the soldiers before it came to the ears of their officers. How, nobody knows. The commander of a brigade in Virginia made the rounds of his camp one night. He saw considerable bustle among the troops—fires burning and rations cooking. Inquiring the cause, he was told that the brigade would receive orders to march before sunrise the next morning. The brigadier laughed at this, thinking it was a joke on
