regiment crossed the Ohio River.
"We've preempted this bit of real estate, and we'll hold it against the
whole Southern Confederacy. Break for that fence there, boys, and every
fellow come back with a couple of rails."

It seemed as if he hardly ceased speaking when the boys came running
back with the rails which they laid down along the crest, and dropped
flat behind them, began throwing the gravelly soil over them with their
useful half-canteens. In vain the shower of rebel bullets struck and
sang about them. Not one could penetrate that little ridge of earth and
rails, which in an hour grew into a strong rifle-pit against which the
whole rebel brigade charged, only to sustain a bloody repulse.

The war would have lasted a good deal longer had it not been for the
daily help of the ever-useful half-canteen.

CHAPTER III. THE OLD CANTEEN

THE MANY AND QUEER USES TO WHICH IT WAS AT LAST PUT.

[Illustration: THE DIVERSE USES OF THE GOOD OLD CANTEEN 029 ]

WHEN Josiah (called "Si" for short) Klegg, of the 200th Ind., drew his
canteen from the Quartermaster at Louisville, he did not have a very
high idea of its present or prospective importance. In the 22 hot
Summers that he had lived through he had never found himself very far
from a well or spring when his thirst cried out to be slacked, and he
did not suppose that it was much farther between wells down South.

"I don't see the use of carrying two or three pints o' water along all
day right past springs and over cricks," he remarked to his chum, as the
two were examining the queer, cloth-covered cans.

"We've got to take 'em, any way," answered his chum, resignedly, "It's
regulations."

On his entry into service a boy accepted everything without question
when assured that it was "regulations." He would have charged bayonets
on a buzz-saw if authoritatively informed that it was required by the
mysterious "regulations."

The long march the 200th Ind. made after Bragg over the dusty turnpikes
the first week in October, 1862, taught Si the value of a canteen. After
that it was rarely allowed to get empty.

"What are these grooves along each side for?" he asked, pointing out the
little hollows which give the "prod" lightness and strength.

"Why," answered the Orderly, who, having been in the three-months'
service, assumed to know more about war than the Duke of Wellington,
"the intention of those is to make a wound the lips of which will close
up when the ba