need, and go about three miles out the Little Gap Road
till you come to a new weather-boarded house at the Forks. Make quick
work, Captain.'

"I did make quick work in getting there, for that was about ten, and
about half-past eleven the government wagons were in the yard of the
house and my company in front.

"'We have no chickens,' squalled an old woman from a second-story
window, 'nor pigs, nor anything--all gone. We are lone women.'

"'Only in the day-time, I reckon,' said my orderly; the same fellow
that winked at the chaplain. He was one of the roughest fellows that
ever kept his breath over night. Long, lank, ill-favored, a white
scrawny beard, stained from the corners of his mouth with tobacco juice;
but for all, I'd pick him out of a thousand for an orderly. He was
always there, and his rifle--he always carried his own--a small bore,
heavy barrel, rough-looking piece, never missed.

"As the old woman was talking from the window, a troop of women, from
eighteen to forty years old--but I am a better judge of horses' ages
than women's; they slip us up on that pint too often--came rushing out
of the door. They made all kinds of inquiries, but I set my men quietly
to work loading the wood.

"'Now, Captain, you shan't take that wood,' said a well-developed
little, rather pretty, black-haired woman, but with those peculiar black
eyes, full of the devil, that you only see among the Rebels, and that
the Almighty seems to have set in like lanterns in lighthouses to show
that their bearers are not to be trusted. 'You shan't take that wood!'
raising her voice to a scream. The men worked on quietly, and I
overlooked the work.

"'You dirty, greasy-looking Yankee,' said another, 'born in some
northern poor-house.'

"'And both parents died in jail, I'll bet.'

"'If our Jim was only here, he'd handle the cowardly set in less time
than one of them could pick up that limb.'

"'You chicken thief, you come by it honestly. Your father was a thief
before you, and your mother--'

"This last roused me. I could hear nothing bad of her from man or woman.

"'You she-devil,' said I, turning to her, 'not one word more.' She
turned toward the house.

"But they annoyed the men, and I concluded to keep them still.

"'Sergeant,' said I, addressing the orderly, and nearing the house, the
women close at my heels. 'Sergeant, as our regiment will camp near here
to-morrow, we might as well look out for a company hospital. How big is