speak out, we're off here alone. Have you any
idea?"

"Well, sir, if you was my captain in the old --th, you'd say to the
colonel, 'Colonel, I've remonstrated and remonstrated. Now I'm
desperate. I'm desperate,' says you. 'If there ain't something done
to-morrow I'm going to march my company out and find a new camp, and you
kin court-martial me if you please. I'd rather stand a court-martial
than see my men die!' He'd talk real pleasant at first, so as to git in
all his facts, and then he'd blaze away. And he'd do it, too, if they
didn't listen."

The captain gave the sergeant a keen glance. "And that's your notion of
discipline?" said he.

"There's a newspaper fellow asking for you, Captain, this morning. I see
him a-coming now," was the sergeant's oblique response. But he chuckled,
walking stiffly away, "He'll do it; I bet we won't be here two days
longer." For which glee there was reason, since, inside the hour, the
captain was in the colonel's tent, concluding an eloquent picture of his
company's discomforts with "Somebody has to do something. If you are
powerless, Colonel, I'm not. If they don't give some assurance of
changing the camp to-morrow I shall march Company G out and pitch a camp
myself, and stand a court-martial. I would rather risk a court-martial
than see my men die--and that's what it has come to!"

The colonel looked the fiery young speaker sternly in the eye, and said
something about unsoldierly conduct.

"It would be unmanly conduct for me to let the boys trusted to me die,
because I was afraid to speak out," flung back the captain. "And I know
one thing: if I am court-martialed the papers are likely to get the true
story."

"You mean the reporter on the Chicago papers who is snooping around? Let
me advise you to give him a wide berth."

"I mean nothing of the kind, sir. I only mean that the thing will not be
done in a corner."

"Well, well, keep cool, Captain, you're too good a fellow to fling
yourself away. Wait and see if I can't get something definite out of the
major to-day."

Whereupon the captain departed with outward decent gloom and inward
premonitions of rejoicing, for when he had hit a nail on the head he had
eyes to see. And the colonel betook himself, hot-foot, to the pompous
old soldier in charge of the camp, who happened to be a man of fixed
belief in himself, but, if he feared anything, was afraid of a newspaper
reporter. The colonel gave him the facts, sparing no squal