od opinion of the Deacon's
ability, readily certified that the boys could be safely taken home,
since they would have the benefit of his care and attention, and the
necessary papers came down from Headquarters that day. The Deacon had
the good luck to find his old friend, the Herd-Boss, who took a deep
interest in the matter. He offered to have as good a team as he had at
the crib the next morning, with the wagon-bed filled with cedar-boughs,
to make as easy a couch as possible for the rough ride over the
mountains.

With his heart full of hope and joy, the Deacon bustled around to make
every possible preparation for the journey.

"It's a long way back home, I know," he said to himself, "and the road's
rough and difficult as that to the New Jerusalem; but Faith and Hope,
and the blessin' o' God'll accomplish wonders. If I kin only hold the
souls in them boys' bodies till I kin git 'em back to Bean Blossom
Crick, I'll trust Mother Klegg's nursin' to do the rest. If there ever
was a woman who could stand off the Destroyin' Angel by good nursin'
that woman's Mother Klegg, bless her soul."

The next morning he was up betimes, and cooked the boys as good a
breakfast as he could out of the remainder of his store and what he
could get from the hospital, and then gave what was left to whoever
came. The comfortable crib, which had cost the Deacon so much labor, had
been pre-empted by the Surgeon for some of his weakest patients.

The news had reached the 200th Ind. that the boys were going home, and
they came over in a body to say "Good-by."

The sight of them pained the Deacon's good heart. Instead of the
hundreds of well-fed, well-clothed, comfortable-looking young men he had
seen at Murfreesboro a few months before, he now saw a shrunken band
of gaunt, unkempt men, their clothing ragged and patched, many of them
almost shoeless, many of them with pieces of blankets bound around their
feet instead of shoes, many of them with bandages about their still
unhealed wounds, but still keeping their places bravely with their
comrades, and stubbornly refusing to count themselves among the sick and
disabled, though it required all their will-power to do their share
of the duty. But all of them were brimming over with unconquerable
cheerfulness and pluck. They made light of their wounds and
disabilities, jested at one another's ragged clothes, laughed at their
hunger, teased one another about stealing corn from mules, jeered at
the