e tent to
get an opportunity to think clearly. "I'm very glad you have come, for
his life hangs by a thread. That thread is his pluck, aided by a superb
constitution. Most men would have died on the field from such a wound.
Medicine can do but little for him; careful nursing much more; but
his own will and your presence and encouragement will do far more than
either."

"How about Shorty?" inquired the Deacon.

"Shorty's all right if he don't get a setback. The danger from the blow
on his head is pretty near past, if something don't come in to make
further complications. He has been pulled down pretty badly by the low
fever which has been epidemic here since we have settled down in camp,
but he seems to be coming out from it all right."

"I've come down here to do all that's possible for these two boys. Now,
how kin I best do it?" asked the Deacon.

"You can do good by helping nurse them. You could do much more good if
there was more to do with, but we lack almost everything for the proper
care of the wounded and sick. We have 15,000 men in hospital here, and
not supplies enough for 3,000. When we will get more depends on
just what luck our cavalry has in keeping the rebels off our line of
supplies."

"Show me what to do, give me what you kin, and I'll trust in the Lord
and my own efforts for the rest."

"Yes, and you kin count on me to assist," chimed in Shorty, who had
come up. "I won't let you play lone hand long, Deacon, for I'm gittin'
chirpier every day. If I could only fill up good and full once more on
hardtack and pork, or some sich luxuries, I'd be as good as new agin."

"You mean you'd be put to bed under three feet of red clay, if you were
allowed to eat all you want to," said the Surgeon. "There's where the
wind is tempered to the shorn lamb. If you could eat as much as you want
to eat, I should speedily have to bid good-by to you. For the present,
Mr. Klegg, do anything that suggests itself to you to make these men
comfortable. I need scarcely caution you to be careful about their food,
for there is nothing that you can get hold of to over-feed them. But
you'd better not let them have anything to eat until I come around again
and talk to you more fully. I put them in your charge."

The Deacon's first thought was for Si, and he bestirred himself to do
what he thought his wife, who was renowned as a nurse, would do were she
there.

He warmed some water, and tenderly as he could command his strong,