Chapter XIII. "An Apple Jack Raid."

This kind o' sojerin' ain't a mite like our October trainin', A chap could clear right out from there, ef it only looked like rainin'; And the Cunnels, too, could kiver up their shappoes with bandanners, An' send the Insines skootin' to the bar-room, with their banners, (Fear o' gittin' on 'em spotted,) an' a feller could cry quarter Ef he fired away his ramrod arter tu much rum an' water. --James Russel Lowell.

The morning after the battle, Kent Edwards was strolling around the camp at Wildcat. "Shades of my hot-throated ancestors who swallowed several fine farms by the tumblerful, how thirsty I am!" he said at length. "It's no wonder these Kentuckians are such hard drinkers. There's something in the atmosphere that makes me drier the farther we advance into the State. Maybe the pursuit of glory has something desiccating in it. At least, all the warriors I ever heard of seemed composed of clay that required as much moistening as unslaked lime. I will hie me to teh hill of frankincense and the mountain of myrrh; in other words, I'll go back where Abe is, and get what's left in the canteen."

He found his saturine comrade sitting on a log by a comfortable fire, restoring buttons which, like soldiers, had become "missing by reason of exigencies of the campaign."

The temptation to believe that inanimate matter can be actuated by obstinate malice is almost irresistible when one has to do with the long skeins of black thread which the soldiers use for their sewing. These skeins resolve themselves, upon the pulling of the first thread, into bunches of entanglement more hopelessly perverse than the Gordian knot, or the snarls in a child's hair. To the inexperienced victim, desirous of securing the wherewithal to sew a button on, nothing seems easier than to pull a thread out of the bunch of loose filament that lies before him. Rash man! That simple mesh hat a baffling power like unto the Labyrinth of Arsino, and long labor of fingers and teeth aided by heated and improper language, frequently fails to extract so much as a half foot of thread.

Abe had stuck his needle down into the log beside him. Near, were the buttons he had fished out of his pocket, and he was laboring with clumsy fingers and rising temper at an obdurate bunch of thread.

"I've been round looking over the field," said Kent, as he came up.

A contemptuous snort answered him.

"You ought to've been along. I saw a great many interesting things."

"O, yes, I s'pose. Awful interesting. Lot o' dead men laying around in the mud. 'Bout as interesting, I should say, as a spell o' setting on a Coroner's jury. The things you find interesting would bore anybody else to death."

Abe gave the obstinate clump a savage twist which only made its knots more rebellious, and he looked as if strongly tempted to throw it into the fire.