to the other world.

The heat at this time was so intolerable that our party, in _lieu_ of
any other place of resort, resolved to go to the woods. The sun set in
heaven like a fiery furnace, and we sweat at every pore. I was afraid,
momentarily, of sunstroke, and my horse was bathed in foam. Some
companies of cavalry were sheltered in the edges of the woods, and,
having secured our nags, we penetrated the depths, and spread out our
blankets that we might lie down. But no breath of air stirred the
foliage. The "hot and copper sky" found counterpart in the burning
earth, and innumerable flies and insects fastened their fangs in our
flesh. Cindrey was upon the rack, and it seemed to me that he possessed
a sort of capillary perspiration, for the drops stood at tips of each
separate bristle. He appeared to be passing from the solid to the fluid
state, and I said, ungenerously, that the existing temperature was his
liquifying point.

"Then," said the man "Pop," with a youngish, oldish smile, "we may as
well liquor up."

"I don't drink!" said Twaddle, with a flourish. "During all the perilous
hours of Shiloh, I abstained. But I am willing to admit, in respect to
heat, that Shiloh is nowhere at present. And, therefore, I drink with a
protest."

"No man can drink from my bottle, with a protest," said "Pop." "It isn't
regular, and implies coercion. Now I don't coerce anybody, particularly
you."

"Oh!" said Twaddle, drinking like a fish, or, as "Pop" remarked, enough
to float a gunboat; "oh! we often chaffed each other at Shiloh."

"If you persist in reminding me of Shiloh," blurted Cindrey, "you'll be
the ruin of me,--you and the heat and the flies. You'll have me
dissolving into a dew."

Here he wiped his forehead, and killed a large blue fly, that was
probing his ear. We all resolved to go to sleep, and Twaddle said that
_he_ slept like a top, in the heat of action, at Shiloh. "Pop" asked
him, youngishly, to be kind enough to capture no redoubts while we
slumbered, and not to raise the national flag over any ramparts for
fifteen minutes. Then he grinned oldishly, and commenced to snore, with
his flask in his bosom. I am certain that nobody ever felt a tithe of
the pain, hunger, heat, and weariness, which agonized me, when I awoke
from a half-hour's sweltering nap. My clothing was soaking with water; I
was almost blind; somebody seemed to be sawing a section out of my head;
my throat was hot and crackling; my stomach kn