hey'll have you, Barney. I'm sure that's
magnanimous. But if your jalap takes as much time in working Old
Schnapps as you take in explaining it, the war will be over, and we
shall have seen none of it."

"It's too great a conception to be hastily set forth. Give me time. I'll
lay a guinea that Oswald goes to the hospital before this day week. Let
us see. This is the 14th; before the 20th--" and Barney gave the barrel
of his gun, near him, a furtive wipe with his coat-sleeve.

"Barney, if you'll do that, I'll gather every four-leaved clover between
here and Richmond to give you; and, what's more, if I die I'll leave you
my bones to operate."

"Ah, Nick, dear, I'd rather have your little finger living than all the
possessions of your father's bank. If you were dead--" And honest Barney
seized the poet's hand sentimentally.

"Come, come, fellows, what sort of soldiering do you call this? You
remind me of two school-girls," Jack remonstrated, as in duty bound to
keep up the warrior spirit.

"Yer acquaintances among females being chiefly of the silly sort, it's
no wonder we remind you of the only things you can look back on without
blushing," Barney retorted; and a neighbor poking his head in the door
to learn the cause of the hilarity, the conspirators sallied out for a
jaunt until parade-time. Now, what means Barney employed, or whether he
had any handiwork in what befell, it does not fall to me to say, but
this is what happened: A market hawker came into camp the next morning
and went straight to the big marquee tent where Colonel Oswald stood, in
all the bravery of a new broadcloth uniform with spreading eagles on the
shoulders. The savory fumes of hot sauerkraut aroused the warrior from
his reveries, and he asked, in vociferous delight:

_"Was haben sie? Kohlen, nicht wahr--sauerkraut--das is aber schon?"_

"Yes, mein golonel, I hof cabbage und sauerkraut und"--looking about
circumspectly--"_etwas schnapps aus Antwerpen gebracht?"_

The "golonel's" eyes glistened and he made a motion for the vender to go
to the rear of the marquee. Passing through from the front, he met him
at the rear, and the bargain was hastily concluded, Marsh secreting
three portly bottles in his chest, and turning the edibles over to
Hussey to store in the larder. There had been a good deal of uneasiness
in camp over rumors of cholera, yellow fever, and other dismal
epidemics. When, therefore, the evening after the colonel's purchase the