ty, speaking still faintly,
but far more freely than at first, after he had drained the canteen.
"Sonny, run and git some more; and mind you fill the canteen full this
time. I feel as if I could drink up the Mississippi River. Say, boys,
what's happened? Appearintly, I got a sock-dologer on my head from some
feller who thought I was too fresh. I'm afraid I'll have a spell o'
headache. But we got the flag, didn't we?"

"Yo're bloody right we did," said Wat; "hand we wolloped them bloomin'
rebels till they 'unted their 'oles hin the woods."

"That's good enough," said Shorty, sinking back.

"The column's movin' agin," said Abel Waite, turn ing his attention to
his team.

Shortly after daybreak the team limped painfully up the slope of Mission
Ridge, through Rossville Gap, on either side of which stood Thomas's
indomitable army in battle array, sternly defying the rebel hosts of
Bragg and Longstreet, which swarmed over the hills and valleys in front,
but without much apparent appetite for a renewal of the dreadful fray.

"Where do you men belong? What have you got in that wagon? Where are you
going?" demanded the Provost officer in the road.

"We belong to the 200th Hinjianny. We've got two badly-wounded men and
ha lot o' hammynition in the wagon. We want to find our regiment," an
swered Wat Burnham.

"Stop your wagon right there. We need all the ammunition we can get.
Lift your wounded men into that ambulance, and then go up to that side
of the gap. Your division is up there somewhere."

It was late in the afternoon before the overworked Surgeon in the field
hospital at Chattanooga, in which Si and Shorty were finally deposited,
found time to examine them.

"You got a pretty stiff whack on your head, my man," he said to Shorty,
as he finished looking him over; "but so far as I can tell now it has
not fractured your skull. You Hoosiers have mighty hard heads."

"Reglar clay-knob whiteoak," whispered Shorty; "couldn't split it with
a maul and wedge. Don't mind that a mite, since we got that flag. But
how's my pardner over there?"

"I think you'll pull through all right," continued the Surgeon, "if you
don't have concussion of the brain. You'll have to be--"

"No danger o' discussion of the brains," whispered Shorty. "Don't carry
'em up there, where they're liable to get slubbed. Keep 'em in a safer
place, where there's more around 'em. But how's my pardner?"

"You'll come through all right," said the Surgeon