you could shake a stick at, and could tell, if he wanted to, of
some high-old-hard times with these same Mdewakantonwar, Wahpekute,
Ihanktonwannas, and Minnikanyewazhipu red-skinned fiends.

Returning to camp, as ill luck would have it, they met the colonel
of their regiment riding out to a neighboring camp. Just before
they met him, in fact when they were nearly up to him, for a curve
in the road had hid him from sight till then, the officer in
command rode by Benny with the command:

'D--n it, man, why don't you sling those chickens the other side
your saddle? The colonel will see them, hanging that way.'

'Can't be done! got fourteen turkeys _there_ on a balance!'

By remarkably good fortune the colonel did not see the chickens, so
they and the turkeys were safely smuggled into camp, Benny getting
full credit for maintaining the balance of power, when the odds
were dead against him.

Story ye second:

When the Forty-eleventh P.M. were camped near Boonesboro', what
time the rebels were driven out of Maryland, the colonel of the
said regiment duly issued orders that all provender taken by troops
under his command should be fairly paid for without defalcation for
value received. Now it happened one bright morning that the major
of the aforesaid regiment riding out near camp, saw a private
deliberately lift up what is known in Southern tongue as a 'rock,'
and throwing the same with great skill, instantly kill a small pig
that with half a dozen other small pigs were following their mother
at full speed away from the neighborhood of this same private.

The soldier, who was an Irishman, picked up the pig, and hiding it
under his army sack, was returning to camp, when, lifting up his
head, he saw before him the major, who, assuming his most solemn
look, thus spoke to him:

'What have you under your coat, there?'

'Shure it's an empty stomach, sirr!--and a small pig that's hurted
itself--poor little thing!--and I'm taking it home to mend its leg,
to be sure:--the poor crayture wud be after dying if left all alone
in the cold, the raw morning.'

The major dearly relished the joke, but discipline is discipline,
and there was but one way to overlook this breach of it: that was
to punish Paddy by giving him a three-mile walk down the road,