Many times he lay awake in the night, his face wet with tears.

But with reveille he would be up, laughing and joking with the soldiers, and raising a smile even on the face of the gravest.
It had taken him but a very short time to make himself at home in the regiment.

The men sometimes looked at him with surprise, he was so different from themselves.

They bore their hardships well, but it was with stern faces and grim determination; while this young soldier made a joke of them.
Sometimes he was questioned closely, but he always turned the questions off with a laugh.

He had learned the place where his supposed cousin came from and, while sticking to this, he said that a good fairy must have presided over his birth; information that was much more gravely received than given, for the natives have their superstitions, and believe, as firmly as the inhabitants of these British islands did, two or three hundred years ago, in the existence of supernatural beings, good and bad.
"If you have been blessed by a fairy," one of the elder men suggested, "doubtless you will go through this campaign without harm.