we known you were coming; but it's after retreat now. Next
time, general, if you'll ride down some day, I'll be proud to give you a
review of the whole command. We have a great big field back here."

And the general had promised to come. This necessitated combined
preparation, hence the order for full-dress rehearsal with battery and
all, and then came confusion. Fresh from the command of his beautiful
horse-battery and the dashing service with a cavalry division, Cram
hated the idea of limping along, as he expressed it, behind a battalion
of foot, and said so, and somebody told Brax he had said so,--more than
one somebody, probably, for Brax had many an adviser to help keep him in
trouble. The order that Cram should appear for instruction in review of
infantry and artillery combined gave umbrage to the battery commander,
and his reported remarks thereupon, renewed cause for displeasure to his
garrison chief.

"So far as we're concerned," said Cram, who wanted to utilize the good
weather for battery drill, "we need no instruction, as we have done the
trick time and again before; and if we hadn't, who in the bloody
Fifty-First is there to teach us? Certainly not old Brax."

All the same the order was obeyed, and Cram started out that loveliest
of lovely spring mornings not entirely innocent of the conviction that
he and his fellows were going to have some fun out of the thing before
they got through with it. Not that he purposed putting any hitch or
impediment in the way. He meant to do just exactly as he was bid; and
so, when adjutant's call had sounded and the blue lines of the infantry
were well out on the field, he followed in glittering column of pieces,
his satin-coated horses dancing in sheer exuberance of spirits and his
red-crested cannoneers sitting with folded arms, erect and statuesque,
upon the ammunition-chests. Mrs. Cram, in her pretty basket phaeton,
with Mrs. Lawrence, of the infantry, and several of the ladies of the
garrison in ambulances or afoot, had taken station well to the front of
the forming line. Then it became apparent that old Brax purposed to
figure as the reviewing officer and had delegated Major Minor to command
the troops. Now, Minor had been on mustering and disbursing duty most of
the war, had never figured in a review with artillery before, and knew
no more about battery tactics than Cram did of diplomacy. Mounted on a
sedate old sorrel, borrowed from the quartermaster for the occasio