it'll be too much for me yit."

"Corporal of the Guard, Post No. 1."

"Sergeant of the Guard, Post No. 1," came down the line of sentries as
the two boys were sauntering back to camp.

"Somethin's happening over there at the gate," said Si, and they
quickened their steps in the direction of the main entrance to the camp.

They found there a lank, long-haired, ragged Tennesseean, with a
tattered hat of white wool on his head. His scanty whiskers were
weather-beaten, he had lost most of his front teeth, and as he talked
he spattered everything around with tobacco-juice. He rode on a blind,
raw-bone horse, which, with a dejected, broken-down mule, was attached
by ropes, fragments of straps, withes, and pawpaw bark to a shackly
wagon.

In the latter were some strings of dried apples, a pile of crescents
of dried pumpkins, a sack of meal, a few hands of tobacco, and a jug of
buttermilk.

"I want t' go inter the camps an' sell a leetle jag{170} o' truck,"
the native explained, as he drenched the surrounding weeds with
tobacco-juice. "My ole woman's powerful sick an' ailin', an' I need some
money awfully t' git her some quinine. Yarbs don't seem t' do her no
sort o' good. She must have some Yankee quinine, and she's nigh dead
fer some Yankee coffee. This war's mouty hard on po' people. Hit's jest
killin' 'em by inches, by takin' away their coffee an' quinine. I'm a
Union man, an' allers have bin."

"You haint got any whisky in that wagon, have you?" asked Si.

"O, Lord, no! nary mite. You don't think I'd try t' take whisky into
camp, do you? I'm not sich a bad man as that. Besides, whar'd I git
whisky? The war's broke up all the 'stilleries in the country. What the
Confedrits didn't burn yo'uns did. I've bin sufferin' for months fur a
dram o' whisky, an' as fur my ole woman, she's nearly died. That's the
reason the yarbs don't do her no good. She can't get no whisky to soak
'em in."

"He's entirely too talkative about the wickedness o' bringin' whisky
into camp," whispered Shorty. "He's bin there before. He's an old hand
at the business."

"Sure you've got no whisky?" said Si.

"Sartin, gentlemen; sarch my wagon, if you don't take my word. I only
wish I knowed whar thar wuz some whisky. I'd walk 20 miles in the rain
t' git one little flask fur my ole woman and myself. I tell you, thar
haint a drap t' be found in the hull Duck River Valley. 'Stilleries
all burnt, I tell you." And in the earnestness of his protesta