"Happy to know you, Captain. Can you find seats there? No. Come up
this way. Cudjo, boy! run over to Colonel Marshall's tent, and steal a
couple of stools. Adge, twist the neck off that bottle. Where's the
screw? Hang that screw! Where is it anyhow?"

"Never mind the screw, Mage," cried the adjutant; "I've got a patent
universal here." So saying, this gentleman held out a champagne bottle
in his left hand, and with a down-stroke of his right cut the neck off,
as square as if it had been filed.

"Nate!" ejaculated Hennessy, an Irish officer, who sat near the head of
the table, and who evidently admired that sort of thing.

"What we call a Kentucky corkscrew," said the adjutant coolly. "It
offers a double advantage. It saves time, and you got the wine clear
of--"

"My respects, gentlemen! Captain Haller--Mr Clayley."

"Thank you, Major Twing. To you, sir."

"Ha! the stools at last! Only one! Come, gentlemen, squeeze yourselves
up this way. Here, Clayley, old boy; here's a cartridge-box. Adge!
up-end that box. So--give us your fist, old fellow; how are you? Sit
down, Captain; sit down. Cigars, there!"

At that moment the report of a musket was heard without the tent, and
simultaneously a bullet whistled through the canvas. It knocked the
foraging-cap from the head of Captain Hennessy, and, striking a
decanter, shivered the glass into a thousand pieces!

"A nate shot that, I don't care who fired it," said Hennessy, coolly
picking up his cap. "An inch of a miss--good as a mile," added he,
thrusting his thumb into the bullet-hole.

By this time every officer present was upon his feet, most of them
rushing towards the front of the marquee. A dozen voices called out
together:

"Who fired that gun?"

There was no answer, and several plunged into the thicket in pursuit.
The chaparral was dark and silent, and these returned after a fruitless
search.

"Some soldier, whose musket has gone off by accident," suggested Colonel
Harding. "The fellow has run away, to avoid being put under arrest."

"Come, gentlemen, take your sates again," said Hennessy; "let the poor
divil slide--yez may be thankful it wasn't a shell."

"You, Captain, have most cause to be grateful for the character of the
missile."

"By my sowl, I don't know about that!--a shell or a twenty-four would
have grazed me all the same; but a big shot would have been mighty
inconvanient to the head of my friend Haller, here!"

Th