sin' bread, the best in the whole country, if I do
say it myself."

"Resemble this, Si?" asked Shorty, who was pawing around in his shrunken
haversack, as he produced two dingy crackers and a handful of pieces,
discolored by contact with the coffee and meat during the days of
marching in the rain.

"And, then," continued Si, unmindful of the interruption, "after she
took the bread out, smelling like a bouquet, she put in some biscuits,
and then some dressed chicken, a young pig."

"Just like this," echoed Shorty, pulling out a rusty remnant of very fat
commissary pork.

"Shet up, Shorty," said Si, angered at this reminder of their meager
store, which was all that was left them for the day, since they had far
out marched their wagons. "I won't have you makin' fun o' my mother's
cookin'."

"Well, you shut up torturing me about home goodies," answered
Shorty, "when we hain't got enough grub here to fill one undivided
quarter-section o' one o' our gizzards, and there hain't no more this
side o' the wagons, which are stalled somewhere in the Duck River hills,
and won't be up till the katydids sing. I ain't making fun o' your
mother's cookin'. But I won't have you tormenting me with gas about the
goodies back home."

"I know it ain't right, Shorty," said Si. "It only makes us feel worse.
But I can't help thinkin'--"

"Jest go on thinkin'," sneered Shorty, "if you kin fill yourself up that
way. I can't. You'd better set to studyin' how to make less'n quarter
rations for one fill up two men for all day. There ain't no use goin'
a-foragin'. They call this country the Cumberland Barrens. There never
was grub enough in it to half support the clay-eaters that live around
here, and what there was the rebels have carried off. The only thing
I kin think of is to cut up some basswood chips and fry with this pork.
Mebbe we could make 'em soft enough to fill up on." And Shorty gloomily
shook out the last crumb from the haversacks into a tin of water to
soak, while he fried the grease out of the fragment of pork in his
half-canteen.

"And Pap," continued Si, as if determined to banish famine thoughts
by more agreeable ones, "has had the trottin' team nicely curried,
and their manes and tails brushed out, and hitched 'em to that new
Studebaker-spring wagon he wrote about. They'll put all the good things
in, and then mother and the girls'll climb in. They'll go down the road
in great style, and pick up Annabel, and drive over to