Tom Somers felt that he was now a soldier indeed. While the company remained in Pinchbrook, he had slept every night in his own bed, and taken his meals in the kitchen of the little cottage. He fully realized that he had bade a long farewell to all the comforts and luxuries of home. That day, for the first time, he was to partake of soldiers’ fare, and that night, for the first time, he was to sleep upon a soldier’s bed. These thoughts did not make him repine, for before he signed the muster roll, he had carefully considered, with the best information he could obtain, what hardships and privations he would be called to endure. He had made up his mind to bear all things without a murmur for the blessed land of his birth, which now called upon her sons to defend her from the parricidal blow of the traitor.  
Tom had not only made up his mind to bear all these things, but to bear them patiently and cheerfully. He had a little theory of his own, that rather more than half of the discomforts of this mortal life exist only in the imagination. If he only thought that every thing was all right, it went a great way towards making it all right—a very comforting and satisfactory philosophy, which reduced the thermometer from ninety down to seventy degrees on a hot day in summer, and raised it from ten to forty degrees on a cold day in winter; which filled his stomach when it was empty, alleviated the toothache or the headache, and changed snarling babies into new-fledged angels. I commend Tom’s philosophy to the attention and imitation of all my young friends, assured that nothing will keep them so happy and comfortable as a cheerful and contented disposition.
 
“Tom Somers,” said a voice near him, cutting short the consoling meditation in which he was engaged.
 
His name was pronounced in a low and cautious tone, but the voice sounded familiar to him, and he turned to ascertain who had addressed him. He did not discover any person who appeared to be the owner of the voice, and was leaving the position he had taken on the forward deck of the steamer, when his name was repeated, in the same low and cautious tone.
 
“Who is it? Where are you?” said Tom, looking all about him, among the groups of soldiers who were gathered on various parts of the deck, discussing the present and the future.
 
“Here, Tom,” replied the voice, which sounded more familiar every time he heard it.
 
He turned his eye in the direction from which the sound proceeded, and there, coiled up behind a heap of barrels and boxes, and concealed by a sail-cloth which had been thrown over the goods to protect them from an expected shower, he discovered Fred Pemberton.
 
“What in the name of creation are you doing there, Fred?” exclaimed Tom, laughing at the ludicrous attitude of the embryo secessionist.
 
“Hush! Don’t say a word, Tom. Sit down here where I can talk with you,” added Fred.
 
“What are you doing here?”
 
“I’ll tell if you will keep quiet a moment. Is the company full?”
 
“What company?”
 
“Captain Benson’s, of course.”
 
“No.”
 
“I want to join.”
 
“You!” ejaculated Tom.
 
“Come, come, Tom, no blackguarding now. You and I used to be good friends.”
 
“I’ve nothing against you, Fred—that is, if you’re not a traitor.”
 
“I want to join the company.”
 
“Is your father willing?”
 
“Of course he isn’t; but that needn’t make any difference.”
 
“But you don’t believe in our cause, Fred. We don’t want a traitor in the ranks.”
 
“Hang the cause! I want to go with the company.”
 
“Hang the cause? Well, I reckon that’s a good recommendation.”
 
“I’m all right on that.”
 
“Are you willing to take the oath of allegiance, and swear to sustain the flag of your country?”
 
“Of course I am. I only followed the old man’s lead; but I have got enough of it. Do you think Captain Benson will take me into the company?”
 
“Perhaps he will.”
 
“Ask him—will you? You needn’t say I’m here, you know.”
 
“But what will your father say?”
 
“I don’t care what he says.”
 
Tom thought, if Fred didn’t care, he needn’t, and going aft, he found the captain, and proposed to him the question.
 
“Take him—yes. We’ll teach him loyalty and patriotism, and before his time is out, we will make him an abolitionist,” replied Captain Benson. “What will his father say?”
 
“His father doesn’t know anything about it. Fred ran away, and followed the company into the city.”
 
“Squire Pemberton is a traitor, and I believe the army will be the best school in the world for his son,” added the captain. “It will be better for him to be with us than to be at home. If it was the son of any other man in Pinchbrook, I wouldn’t take him without the consent of his father; as it is, I feel perfectly justified in accepting him.”
 
Tom hastened to the forward deck to report the success of his mission. The result was, that Fred came out of his hiding-place, and exhibited himself to the astonished members of the Pinchbrook company. When he announced his intention to go to the war, and, with a pardonable flourish, his desire to serve his country, he was saluted with a volley of cheers. Captain Benson soon appeared on the forward deck, and the name of the new recruit was placed on the enlistment paper.
 
Fred was seventeen years of age, and was taller and stouter than Tom Somers. No questions were asked in regard to his age or his physical ability to endure the hardships of a campaign.
 
The steamer arrived at Fort Warren, and the company landed. After waiting a short time on the wharf, the color company of the —th regiment, to which they were attached, came down and escorted them to the parade ground within the fort. It was a d............