all right! it's all right!" he began to yell, some distance away.
"It's all right! It's on'y ol' Milt' Jacoby!"

When he arrived at the top of the fence, he paused and mopped his brow.

"What?" they thundered, in an agony of sudden unreasoning
disappointment.

Mrs. Joe Petersen, who was a distant connection of Milton Jacoby,
thought to forestall any damage to her social position by saying at once
disdainfully, "Drunk, I s'pose!"

"Yep," said the major, still on the fence, and mopped his brow. "Drunk
as a fool. Thunder! I was surprised. I--I--thought it was a rebel,
sure."

The thoughts of all these women wavered for a time. They were at a loss
for precise expression of their emotion. At last, however, they hurled
this superior sentence at the major:

"Well, yeh might have known."

A GRAY SLEEVE.

I.

"It looks as if it might rain this afternoon," remarked the lieutenant
of artillery.

"So it does," the infantry captain assented. He glanced casually at the
sky. When his eyes had lowered to the green-shadowed landscape before
him, he said fretfully: "I wish those fellows out yonder would quit
pelting at us. They've been at it since noon."

At the edge of a grove of maples, across wide fields, there occasionally
appeared little puffs of smoke of a dull hue in this gloom of sky which
expressed an impending rain. The long wave of blue and steel in the
field moved uneasily at the eternal barking of the far-away
sharpshooters, and the men, leaning upon their rifles, stared at the
grove of maples. Once a private turned to borrow some tobacco from a
comrade in the rear rank, but, with his hand still stretched out, he
continued to twist his head and glance at the distant trees. He was
afraid the enemy would shoot him at a time when he was not looking.

Suddenly the artillery officer said, "See what's coming!"

Along the rear of the brigade of infantry a column of cavalry was
sweeping at a hard gallop. A lieutenant, riding some yards to the right
of the column, bawled furiously at the four troopers just at the rear of
the colours. They had lost distance and made a little gap, but at the
shouts of the lieutenant they urged their horses forward. The bugler,
careering along behind the captain of the troop, fought and tugged like
a wrestler to keep his frantic animal from bolting far ahead of the
column.

On the springy turf the innumerable hoofs thundered in a swift storm of
sound. In the brown faces