geant Bowers to feed
my mule; but he said that if I reckoned he went to war to be dry-nurse
to a mule, it wouldn't take me very long to find out my mistake. I
believed that this was insubordination, but I was full of uncertainties
about everything military, and so I let the thing pass, and went and
ordered Smith, the blacksmith's apprentice, to feed the mule; but he
merely gave me a large, cold, sarcastic grin, such as an ostensibly
seven-year-old horse gives you when you lift his lip and find he is
fourteen, and turned his back on me. I then went to the captain, and
asked if it was not right and proper and military for me to have an
orderly. He said it was, but as there was only one orderly in the corps,
it was but right that he himself should have Bowers on his staff. Bowers
said he wouldn't serve on anybody's staff; and if anybody thought he
could make him, let him try it. So, of course, the thing had to be
dropped; there was no other way.

Next, nobody would cook; it was considered a degradation; so we had no
dinner. We lazied the rest of the pleasant afternoon away, some dozing
under the trees, some smoking cob-pipes and talking sweethearts and war,
some playing games. By late supper-time all hands were famished; and
to meet the difficulty all hands turned to, on an equal footing, and
gathered wood, built fires, and cooked the meal. Afterward everything
was smooth for a while; then trouble broke out between the corporal and
the sergeant, each claiming to rank the other. Nobody knew which was the
higher office; so Lyman had to settle the matter by making the rank of
both officers equal. The commander of an ignorant crew like that has
many troubles and vexations which probably do not occur in the regular
army at all. However, with the song-singing and yarn-spinning around the
camp-fire, everything presently became serene again; and by-and-by we
raked the corn down level in one end of the crib, and all went to bed on
it, tying a horse to the door, so that he would neigh if any one tried
to get in.(1)

We had some horsemanship drill every forenoon; then, afternoons, we
rode off here and there in squads a few miles, and visited the farmers'
girls, and had a youthful good time, and got an honest good dinner or
supper, and then home again to camp, happy and content.

For a time, life was idly delicious, it was perfect; there was nothing
to mar it. Then came some farmers with an alarm one day. They said it
was rumoured