Harold Frederic

The Return of the O'Mahony Harold Frederic

ZEKE TISDALE was the father of Company F. Not that this title had ever been formally conferred upon him, or even recognized in terms, but everybody understood about it. Sometimes Company F was for whole days together exceedingly proud of the relation-but alas! more often it viewed its parent with impatient levity, not to say contempt. In either case, it seemed all the same to Zeke. He was by no means the oldest man in the company, at least as appearances went. Some there were gathered about the camp-fire, this last night in March of '65, who looked almost old enough to be his father-gray, gaunt, stiff-jointed old fighters, whose hard service stretched back across four years of warfare to Lincoln's first call for troops, and who laughed now grimly over the joke that they had come out to suppress the Rebellion within ninety days, and had the job still unfinished on their hands at the end of fourteen hundred.