ewberry, crawling on the ground, said to
itself, 'Hello! Let's make a trap'; 'n' when the rail fences all
hollered out, 'We're goin' to turn agin you!' 'n' when a bit of swamp
hollered louder than any, 'Let's suck down Billy Maydew--suck down Billy
Maydew!' 'n' when a lot o' bamboo vines running over cedars, up with
'Hold him fast until you hear a bullet whizzing!' 'n' I got to the
Shenandoah and there wa'n't no bridge, 'n' the Shenandoah says 'I'd just
as soon drown men as look at them!'--when all them things talked so, I
knew just how the critturs feel in the woods; 'n' I ain't so crazy about
hunting as I was--and I say again this here air a most con-ve-ni-ent
bridge."

With his musket butt he struck the boarded side. The noise was so
resoundingly greater than he had expected that he laughed and the men
with him. Now Sergeant Mathew Coffin was as nervous as a witch. He had
been marching along with his thoughts moodily hovering over the battery
he would take almost single-handed, or the ambush he would dislodge and
so procure promotion indeed. At the noise of the stick he started
violently. "Who did that? Oh, I see, and I might have known it! I'll
report you for extra duty--"

"Report ahead," said Billy, under his breath.

Coffin halted. "What was that you said, Maydew?"

"I didn't speak to you--sir."

"Well, you'll speak to me now. What was it you said then?" He came
nearer, his arm thrown up, though but in an angry gesture. "If I struck
you," thought Billy, "I'd be sorry for it, so I won't do it. But one
thing's sure--I certainly should like to!"

"If you don't answer me," said Coffin thickly, "I'll report you for
disobedience as well as for disorderly conduct! What was it you said
then?"

"I said, 'Report ahead--and be damned to you!'"

Coffin's lips shut hard. "Very good! We'll see how three days of
guardhouse tastes to you!--Forward!"

The party cleared the bridge and almost immediately found itself in the
straggling village street. The mist clung here as elsewhere, houses and
trees dim shapes, the surrounding hills and the dense woods beyond the
South Fork hardly seen at all. Coffin marched with flushed face and his
brows drawn together. He was mentally writing a letter on pale blue
paper, and in it he was enlarging upon ingratitude. The men sympathized
with Billy and their feet sounded resentfully upon the stones. Billy
alone marched with elaborate lightness, quite as though he were walking
on air an