ter his companions had
left, by coolly drawing from his haversack a lot of biscuits and the ham
of a shote. As he drew out his huge knife and began slicing off
tempting bits of lean meat my envy overcame any timidity I may have had,
and I determined to have some of that meat by fair means or foul.

Stanton came up to me as I came to this conclusion, and I remarked to
him that I was about to take supper with the rebel. His curiosity
spurred me on, and I walked out to the sentinel and asked if I could
have some of his meat and biscuit. Much to my surprise and pleasure he
promptly said: "Tub ber shure," and sliced off for me a liberal
allowance of ham, giving it to me with some biscuits. My success led
Stanton to follow suit, and we both had a fair meal with the generous
fellow.

It was now getting dark, and the rain kept coming down. We had full
possession of the room, and as Stanton and myself walked back to our
companions, we saw Fenton eating. Inquiry developed the fact that he had
been plundering the piled-up haversacks while we had been outside, and
when we learned that there was a supply still unappropriated we promptly
set out to empty the haversacks of everything desirable. During our talk
together the sentinel had added his haversack to the pile, and the first
thing to which we came was the balance of the ham from which we had just
dined, together with fourteen biscuits. We felt awfully mean about it,
but "self-preservation is the first law of nature," and we cleaned that
bone, throwing it and the haversack behind the wainscoting.

This food was sufficient for our wants, and we would have been satisfied
but that we found Rummel on one side eating some light bread, which he
had purloined from another haversack. This made us ambitious again, so
we went back and took all the desirable stuff we could find in the pile
for future use.

We got a lot of light bread, about a pound and a half of butter and some
sweet potatoes.

The wounded men had a kettle for cooking, and I borrowed this, built a
fire in the stove and cooked our sweet potatoes.

About this time some of the guards came back, and one of them came to me
to borrow the kettle, saying that he had some sweet potatoes to cook.

I told the man that he would have to wait until our stuff was cooked,
and he sat down quietly and waited, chatting with us to pass away the
time. When our potatoes were cooked we gave him the utensil, which he
filled with water and