o lines of
battle, each of three regiments of infantry, the first some two hundred
yards in advance of the second. In the space between them lay two
four-gun batteries, one of them brass twelve-pounder "Napoleons," and
the other rifled Parrotts. To the rear of the infantry were the
recumbent troopers and picketed horses of a regiment of cavalry. All
around, in the far, black distance, invisible and inaudible, paced or
watched stealthily the sentinels of the grand guards.

There was not a fire, not a torch, nor a star-beam in the whole bivouac
to guide the feet of Adjutant Wallis in his pilgrimage after whiskey.
The orders from brigade headquarters had been strict against
illuminations, for the Confederates were near at hand in force, and a
surprise was proposed as well as feared. A tired and sleepy youngster,
almost dropping with the heavy somnolence of wearied adolescence, he
stumbled on through the trials of an undiscernible and unfamiliar
footing, lifting his heavy riding-boots sluggishly over imaginary
obstacles, and fearing the while lest his toil were labor misspent. It
was a dry camp, he felt dolefully certain, or there would have been
more noise in it. He fell over a sleeping sergeant, and said to him
hastily, "Steady, man--a friend!" as the half-roused soldier clutched
his rifle. Then he found a lieutenant, and shook him in vain; further
on a captain, and exchanged saddening murmurs with him; further still a
camp-follower of African extraction, and blasphemed him.

"It's a God-forsaken camp, and there isn't a horn in it," said Adjutant
Wallis to himself as he pursued his groping journey. "Bet you I don't
find the first drop," he continued, for he was a betting boy, and
frequently argued by wagers, even with himself. "Bet you two to one I
don't. Bet you three to one--ten to one."

Then he saw, an indefinite distance beyond him, burning like red-hot
iron through the darkness, a little scarlet or crimson gleam, as of a
lighted cigar.

"That's Old Grumps, of the Bloody Fourteenth," he thought. "I've raided
into his happy sleeping-grounds. I'll draw on him."

But Old Grumps, otherwise Colonel Lafayette Gildersleeve, had no
rations--that is, no whiskey.

"How do you suppose an officer is to have a drink, Lieutenant?" he
grumbled. "Don't you know that our would-be Brigadier sent all the
commissary to the rear day before yesterday? A canteenful can't last
two days. Mine went empty about five minutes ago."

"Oh