e if ye can't confiscate a
canteen of whiskee somewhere in the camp. Bedad, if I can't buy it
I'll stale it. We're goin' to fight to-morry, an' it may be it's the
last chance we'll have for a dhrink, unless there's more lik'r now in
the other worrld than Dives got."

The brigade was bivouacked in some invisible region, amid the damp,
misty darkness of a September night. The men lay in their ranks, each
with his feet to the front and his head rearward, each covered by his
overcoat and pillowed upon his haversack, each with his loaded rifle
nestled close beside him. Asleep as they were, or dropping placidly
into slumber, they were ready to start in order to their feet and pour
out the red light and harsh roar of combat. There were two 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, nor a torch, nor a star-beam in the whole
bivouac to guide the feet of Adjutant Wallis in his pilgrimage after
whisky. The orders from brigade headquarters had been strict against
illuminations, for the Confederates were near at hand in force, and a
surprise was purposed 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 ar