"Shorty," said Si admiringly, "Gen. Grant 'll hear o' you some day, and then Co. Q will lose its brightest star, but the army'll gain a great General."
FORE:Night suddenly came, with pitchy darkness, but Si steadily forged onward. Then the rain ceased as suddenly as it began, but the road was encumbered with fallen timber and swirling races of muddy water. They seemed more uncomfortable even than when the rain was falling. They were now nearing the mill, and the sound of a fitful musketry fire came to their ears.
ONE:John Dodd, twenty-seven years old, master, part of the third generation, arranged his chair carefully so that it faced the door of the Commons Room, letting the light from the great window illumine the back of his head. He clasped his hands in his lap in a single, nervous gesture, never noticing that the light gave him a faint saintlike halo about his feathery hair. His companion took another chair, set it at right angles to Dodd's and gave it long and thoughtful consideration, as if the act of sitting down were something new and untried.
TWO:"Let me and Sandy go," pleaded little Pete Skidmore. "The big boys went before."
THREE:FROM: Leonard Offutt
FORE:"Orderly," said Shorty in his most conciliatory way, "if you want to do me a favor make Pete Skidmore one of the detail.""Goodness, Sarjint, you're not going to travel in such a storm as this," gasped Gid Mackall.
"Excuse me. General," answered the Deacon hastily, "I"It was astonishing what things they found, besides guns and equipments. Evidently, the rebels had left quite hurriedly, and many personal belongings were either forgotten or could not be found in the darkness. Samples of about everything that soldiers carry, and a good many that they are not supposed to, were found lying around. There were cooking utensils, some on the fire, with corn-pone and meat in them; some where the imperative orders to march found their owners with their breakfasts half-devoured; there were hats clumsily fashioned of wisps of long-leaved pine sewed together; there were caps which had been jaunty red-and-blue "Zouaves" when their owners had mustered around Nashville in 1861, but had been faded and tarnished and frayed by the mud and rain at Donelson, Shiloh and Stone River, and by the dust and grime of Perryville and Chickamauga, until they had as little semblance to their former perkiness as the grim-visaged war had to the picnic of capturing ungarrisoned forts and lolling in pleasant Summer camps on the banks of the Cumberland. There were coats of many patterns and stages of dilapidation, telling the same story of former finery, draggled through the injurious grime of a thousand camps and marches. There were patched and threadbare blankets, tramped-out boots and shoes, an occasional book, many decks of cards, and so on.And there were no elders any more. There were neither elders nor masters: there was only Cadnan, and Daraand, somewhere, Marvor and the group he had spoken of. Cadnan peered round, but he saw no one. There were small new sounds, and those were frightening, but they were so tinyrustles, squeaks, no morethat Cadnan could not feel greatly frightened by them."And I tell you you must go," said the Sergeant, irritably, and turning away, as if to end the discussion. "Williams, you and Young bring him along."Somewhere his mind continued to think, but the thoughts were powerless and very small. He felt the girl's hands on his shoulders, trying to hold him, and masked by the sounds of his own weeping he heard her voice, too:"Well, I have stirred up a yaller-jacket's nest for sure," thought Shorty, rather tickled at the odds which were arrayed against him. "But I believe I kin handle 'em until either the train pulls out or the boys hear the ruction and come to my help."
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