t suppose you could buy a yard o' kaliker or a
stitch o' finery within 50 miles o' this clayknob."

"What we might do," said Si reflectively, "would be to give her her
trowso futuriously, so to speak. We've just bin paid off, and hain't had
no chance to spend our money, so that all the boys has some. Every one
o' 'em 'll be glad to give a dollar, which you kin hand her in a little
speech, tellin' her that we intended to present her with her trowso,
but circumstances over which we had no control, mainly the distance to a
milliner shop, prevented, but we would hereby present her with the means
to git it whenever convenient, and she could satisfy herself much better
by picking it out her ownself. You want to recollect that word trowso.
It's the elegant thing for a woman's wedding finery, and if you use it
you'll save yourself from mentioning things that you don't know nothin'
about, and probably oughtn't to mention. My sisters learned it to me. A
girl who'd bin at boarding-school learned them."

"Good idee," said Shorty, slapping his leg. "I'll go right out and
collect a dollar from each of the boys. Say that word over agin, till I
git it sure."

Shorty came back in a little while with his hands full of greenbacks
"Every boy ponied right up the moment I spoke to him," he said. "And the
Captain and Adjutant each gave $5. She's got money enough to buy out the
best milliner shop in this part o' Tennessee."

Next came thoughts of a wedding-supper for the bride's friends. The
Colonel took the view that the large number of recruits which he
expected to gain justified him in ordering the Commissary to issue a
liberal quantity of rations. Two large iron wash-kettles were scoured
out one used to make coffee in and the other to boil meat, while there
was sugar and hardtack in abundance. The mountains were covered with
royal blooms of rhododendron, and at the Adjutant's suggestion enough
of these were cut to fill every nook and corner of the main room of the
house, hiding the rough logs and dark corners with masses of splendid
color, much to the astonish ment of the bride, who had never before
thought of rhododendrons as a feature of house adornment.

Then, just before 6 o'clock roll-call, Co. Q, with every man in it
cleaned up as for dress-parade, with Nathan Hartburn at the head,
supported on either side by Si and Shorty, and flanked by the Adjutant
and Chaplain, marched up the hill to the house, led by the fifers and
drummers