's your pipe. They found it on that Confederate soldier that
captured you."

I pushed it away and said, "I don't want it. I have quit smoking."

CHAPTER VI.

I Capture "Jeff"--I Get Back at the Chaplain--The Chaplain
Arrested--Off on a Raid--I Meet the Relatives of the Dead
Confederate--My Powers of Lying are Brought into Play.

The winding up of the last chapter of this history, with its sad
incidents, deaths and burials, was unavoidable, but it shall not occur
again. The true historian has got to get in all the particulars. I think
I never felt quite as downhearted as I did the day or two after the
skirmish, when our boys were killed. It had seemed as though there
was no danger of anybody getting hurt, as long as they looked out for
themselves, but now there was a feeling that anybody was liable to be
killed, any time, and why not me? Of course the old veterans of the
regiment were the ones who would naturally be expected to take the brunt
of the battle, but there was a habit of sending raw recruits into places
of danger that struck me as being mighty careless, as well as very bad
judgment. Then there were great preparations being made for an advance
movement, or a retreat, or something, and my mind was constantly occupied
in trying to find out whether it was to be an advance or a retreat. If
it was an advance, I wanted to arrange to be in the rear, and if it was
a retreat, it seemed to me as as though the proper place for a man who
wanted to live to go home, was in front. And yet what chance was there
for a common private soldier to find out whether it was an advance or
a retreat. Finally I decided that when the regiment _did_ start out, I
would manage to be about the middle, so it wouldn't make much difference
which way we went. When that idea occurred to me I pondered over it
a good deal and told the chaplain, and he said it was a piece of as
brilliant strategy as he had ever heard of, and he was willing to adopt
it, only being a staff officer it was necessary for him and me to ride
with the colonel, and the colonel most always rode at the head, though
his place was about the middle. He said he would speak to the colonel
about it. It made my hair stand to see the preparations that were being
made for carnage. Ammunition enough was issued to kill a million men,
and the doctors were packing bandages and plasters, and physic, and
splints and probes, until it made me sick to look at them. When I