heir feet and pour out
the red light and harsh roar of combat. There were two lines of battle,
each of three regiments of infantry, the first some two hundred yards
in advance of the second. In the space between them lay two four-gun
batteries, one of them brass twelve-pounder "Napoleons," and the other
rifled Parrotts. To the rear of the infantry were the recumbent troopers
and picketed horses of a regiment of cavalry. All around, in the far,
black distance, invisible and inaudible, paced or watched stealthily the
sentinels of the grand guards.

There was not a fire, not a torch, nor a star-beam in the whole bivouac
to guide the feet of Adjutant Wallis in his pilgrimage after
whiskey. The orders from brigade headquarters had been strict against
illuminations, for the Confederates were near at hand in force, and a
surprise was proposed as well as feared. A tired and sleepy youngster,
almost dropping with the heavy somnolence of wearied adolescence, he
stumbled on through the trials of an undiscernible and unfamiliar
footing, lifting his heavy riding-boots sluggishly over imaginary
obstacles, and fearing the while lest his toil were labor misspent. It
was a dry camp, he felt dolefully certain, or there would have been more
noise in it. He fell over a sleeping sergeant, and said to him hastily,
"Steady, man--a friend!" as the half-roused soldier clutched his rifle.
Then he found a lieutenant, and shook him in vain; further on a captain,
and exchanged saddening murmurs with him; further still a camp-follower
of African extraction, and blasphemed him.

"It's a God-forsaken camp, and there isn't a horn in it," said Adjutant
Wallis to himself as he pursued his groping journey. "Bet you I don't
find the first drop," he continued, for he was a betting boy, and
frequently argued by wagers, even with himself. "Bet you two to one I
don't. Bet you three to one--ten to one."

Then he saw, an indefinite distance beyond him, burning like red-hot
iron through the darkness, a little scarlet or crimson gleam, as of a
lighted cigar.

"That's Old Grumps, of the Bloody Fourteenth," he thought. "I've raided
into his happy sleeping-grounds. I'll draw on him."

But Old Grumps, otherwise Colonel Lafayette Gildersleeve, had no
rations--that is, no whiskey.

"How do you suppose an officer is to have a drink, Lieutenant?" he
grumbled. "Don't you know that our would-be Brigadier sent all the
commissary to the rear day before yesterday? A ean