onel with dignity. "I'm not
a-dying yet. If I said anything last it was a mere exclamation of
disgust--the disgust of an officer and gentleman. I suppose you know
something about our would-be Brigadier. I suppose you think you know
something about him."

"Bet you I know _all_ about him," affirmed Wallis. "He enlisted in the
old Tenth as a common soldier. Before he had been a week in camp they
found that he knew his biz, and they made him a Sergeant. Before we
started for the field the Governor got his eye on him and shoved him
into a Lieutenancy. The first battle h'isted him to a Captain. And the
second--bang! whiz! he shot up to Colonel, right over the heads of
everybody, line and field. Nobody in the old Tenth grumbled. They saw
that he knew his biz. I know _all_ about him. What'll you bet?"

"I'm not a betting man, Lieutenant, except in a friendly game of
poker," sighed Old Grumps. "You don't know anything about your
Brigadier," he added in a sepulchral murmur, the echo of an empty
canteen. "I have only been in this brigade a month, and I know more
than you do, far, very far more, sorry to say it. He's a reformed
clergyman. He's an apostatized minister." The Colonel's voice as he
said this was solemn and sad enough to do credit to an undertaker.
"It's a bad sort, Wallis," he continued, after another deep sigh, a
very highly perfumed one, the sigh of a bar-keeper. "When a clergyman
falls, he falls for life and eternity, like a woman or an angel. I
never knew a backslidden shepherd to come to good. Sooner or later he
always goes to the devil, and takes down whomsoever hangs to him."

"He'll take down the old Tenth, then," asserted Wallis. "It hangs to
him. Bet you two to one he takes it along."

"You're right, Adjutant; spoken like a soldier," swore Gildersleeve.
"And the Bloody Fourteenth, too! It will march into the burning pit
as far as any regiment; and the whole brigade, yes sir! But a
backslidden shepherd, my God! Have we come to that? I often say
to myself, in the solemn hours of the night, as I remember my
Sabbath-school days, 'Great Scott, have we come to that?' A reformed
clergyman! An apostatized minister! Think of it, Wallis, think of it!
Why, sir, his very wife ran away from him. They had but just buried
their first boy," pursued Old Grumps, his hoarse voice sinking to a
whimper. "They drove home from the burial-place, where lay the
new-made grave. Arrived at their door, _he_ got out and extended his