be over civil to
any one who chanced to stumble against them in the dark. So Dick drew
his squad off into the woods out of the way and went into camp; that is
to say, he ate the little piece of hard tack he found in his haversack,
washed it down with a drink of warm water from his canteen, rolled
himself up in his blanket and went to sleep.

"There goes reveille," exclaimed Rodney, hitting him a poke in the ribs
the next morning about daylight. "But it's in the enemy's camp, and I
don't think we'll pay much attention to it. I am going to sleep again."

"Say," said one of the men, "I reckon we'd best be toddling along, for
if I didn't hear wagons and troops moving all night, I dreamed it. Let's
get up and go as far as the diggings any way, and get a bite to eat."

The "diggings" referred to was a pile of hard-tack which, when Rodney
first saw it, was almost as long and high as the railroad depot. There
were several thousand boxes in the pile, and there they had been beside
the road, exposed to all sorts of weather, ever since they arrived in
Corinth. Why they were not served out to the men instead of lying there
to waste no one knew or cared to ask; but every squad that passed that
way made it a point to stop long enough to break open a few boxes and
fill their haversacks. Toward these "diggings" Dick and his men bent
their steps, and before they were fairly out of the woods in which they
had slept, they became aware that they had been deserted. There was not
a man in sight, and the guns which looked threateningly at them over the
top of the nearest redoubt, they found on inspection to be logs of
wood.

"Beauregard's whole army has fallen back, and done it so silently that
they never awoke us," said Dick. "Let us hurry on and get into our lines
before some of the enemy's cavalry come along and gobble us up. What do
you see, Rodney?"

"I am afraid we are gobbled already," was the answer, "I saw some men
dodging about in the woods over there. If they are not the enemy's
pickets they must be our rear guard, and as we can't get away we had
better go over and make ourselves square with them."

This proposition met with the approval of his comrades, but it did not
seem to suit the men in the woods, for Dick's squad had not gone many
steps in their direction when some one called out:

"By the right flank, march!" and the command was emphasized by the
sudden appearance of half a dozen muskets which were pointed straight a