eral
minutes, and then broke out with:

"Say, Mr. Klegg, I've an idee. That Quartermaster o' the Maumee
Muskrats is a sport from way back. He'd give his vary eyes for a good
hoss--one that kin beat everybody else's. The way the horses are run
down now this one kin carry a heavy handicap, and beat any one in camp.
I'll bet I kin take this hoss over to him and git $150 in greenbacks for
him, for he kin win a bushel o' money with him the very first day."

"Shorty," said the Deacon, in a tone that made that worthy start,
"necessity and the stress o' circumstances may force me to do many
things which are agin my conscience, and for which I shall repent
in sackcloth and ashes, if needs be, but I hain't yit bin reduced to
sellin' stolen property. The Lord save me from that. That hoss and
wagon's got to go back to the owner, if I risk my life in takin' 'em."

Shorty wisely kept his reply to himself, but he thought how absurd it
was to have men about the army who were too old and set in their ideas
to learn army ways. He muttered to himself:

"If he succeeds in gittin' that hoss outen camp agin, I'll expect to see
the back o' my neck, or something else quite as wonderful."

The Deacon finally succeeded in getting a couple of ears of corn and a
handful of fodder for the horse's supper, and it was decided that Shorty
should watch him the first part of the night, and the Deacon from thence
till morning.

As the Deacon pondered over the matter in the early morning hours, he
saw that his only chance of getting the horse back was to start with him
before daylight revealed him to the men in camp.

[Illustration: WELL, I'LL BE DUMBED, MUTTERED THE DEACON. 35]

"I'll drive him well outside our lines, and as near to the house as I
think it prudent to go, and then turn him loose," he said to himself.
"If he's got the sense o' the horses up North he'll go straight home,
and then my conscience will be clear. If he don't, I'll have done all I
could. The Lord don't ask unreasonable things of us, even in atonement."

So he cooked as good a breakfast for the boys as he could prepare from
his materials, woke up Shorty and put him in charge, and an hour before
daybreak turned the horse's head toward the pontoon bridge, and started
him on a lively trot.

He had only fairly started when a stern voice called out to him from a
large tent:

"Here, you, stop that trotting. What do you mean? Don't you know that
it's strictly against orders t