I was homesick. There is nothing that will make a man or a boy so awfully homesick, when away from home and realizing that you cannot get there, as to meet with some such "unpleasantness" as this. It is a much more satisfactory thing, as I know from subsequent experience, to meet your enemy on a skirmish line, knowing the gun in his hand is cocked and loaded, than it is to run across him while unarmed on his own dunghill. I did not like the idea of being "caught" as a spy. I always had more dread of the attendant humiliation connected with the probable surroundings of a prisoner, who was a recognized Spy, than of the final danger.
When I reached my room, I found my two clever Maryland refugees there. Probably my manner and appearance still showed some signs of my agitation, as they both immediately became interested in me. The Colonel, who was the jolly fellow of this trio, said, laughingly:
Fortunately for me, they both attributed my apparent embarrassment to a trifling matter, and did not pursue it further. Elkton, the older and more staid member of the refugee band, told me, with great glee and pleasure, that he had received an assurance from the Rebel War Department that his quota, or the detachment of refugees that he had been gathering up, would be specially provided for as a part of a Maryland company of light artillery which was then organizing. He would be the First Lieutenant of this company, and, as such, would, of course, see that _his_ boys were well taken care of. It was further explained that his quota would be permitted to form a detachment of itself, or, at least, it would be so arranged that one section of this proposed battery would be in charge of his own men. This plan was not exactly what Elkton and the Colonel had calculated upon when they left their comfortable Maryland homes to join the forces of the Rebels. Elkton probably expected to be at least a Colonel, and the Colonel himself evidently considered himself entitled to at least a Lieutenant-Colonelcy in the Confederate armies. They might have attained to this position if they could have furnished sufficient recruits themselves to have filled out a regiment. As it was, they were sadly and sorely disappointed in not finding the rush of refugees from Maryland which they had expected, and they were obliged to be satisfied with the best they could get, which was a lieutenancy for Elkton, and a sergeantcy for the Colonel. In all these talks and plans, it had been calculated by both of these gentlemen that I should, as a matter of course, join the army--as one of their detachment.