Much of the time -- especially later on -- was given to marching
and getting food; but drilling and camp duties at first took up most of it.
This was especially hard on the poorer men, no one knew what it was to them.
Some moped, some fell sick. Of the former class was Little Darby.
He was too strong to be sickly as one of the Mills boys was,
who died of fever in hospital only three months after they went in,
and too silent to be as the other, who was jolly and could dance
and sing a good song and was soon very popular in the company;
more popular even than Old Cove, who was popular in several rights,
as being about the oldest man in the company and as having a sort of dry wit
when he was in a good humor, which he generally was. Little Darby was
hardly distinguished at all, unless by the fact that he was somewhat taller
than most of his comrades and somewhat more taciturn. He was only
a common soldier of a common class in an ordinary infantry company,
such a company as was common in the army. He still had the little wallet
which he had picked up in the path that morning he left home.
He had asked both of the Mills boys vaguely if they ever had owned
such a piece of property, but they had not, and when old Cove told him
that he had not either, he had contented himself and carried it about with him
somewhat elaborately wrapped up and tied in an old piece of oilcloth
and in his inside jacket pocket for safety, with a vague feeling that some day
he might find the owner or return it.
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