mmer
until he awakened and beat the reveille. This aroused the weary
Orderly-Sergeants, who started upon the task of getting up the
bone-wracked, aching-muscled men. In 10 minutes there was enough
discontent and bitter grumbling in the 200th Ind. to have furnished
forth a new political party.

The awakening process finally reached those of Co. Q who had roosted on
Si's rail all night.

Si vigorously insisted on being let alone; that he hadn't been asleep
five minutes, and that, anyhow, it was not his turn to go on guard. But
the Orderly-Sergeant of Co. Q was a persistent fellow, and would not be
denied.

When Si finally tried to rise he found that, in addition to the
protests of his stiff legs, he was pinned firmly down. Feeling around to
ascertain the cause, he discovered that the tail of his overcoat and his
shoes had become deeply imbedded in the mud, and frozen solidly there.
Shorty was in the same fix.

[Illustration: FROZEN IN THE MUD 29]

"Got to shuck yourself out o' your overcoat, and leave them gunboats
anchored where they are," remarked Shorty, doing as he said, and falling
in for roll-call in his stocking feet.

After roll-call Si got a hatchet from one of the boys and chopped his
and Shorty's shoes out. The overcoats were left for subsequent
effort, for the first thing was to get some wood and water and cook
breakfast.{31}

The morning was bitter cold and the sky overcast, but Si felt that this
was a thousand times better than the cheerless rain, which seemed to
soak his very life out of him.

He pounded most of the frozen mud off his shoes, picked up the
camp-kettle, and started off for wood and water, broke the ice on the
creek, took a good wash, and presently came back with a load of dry pine
and a kettle full of water.

"My joints feel like I think an old wagon does after it's gone about
a year without greasing," he remarked to Shorty, who had a good fire
going; "but I think that after I get about a quart o' hot coffee, inside
of me, with a few pounds o' pork and crackers, I'll be nearly as good as
new again. My, how good that grub does smell! An' did you ever see such
a nice fire?"

He chopped his and Shorty's overcoats out while Shorty was cooking
breakfast, and when at last he sat down on one end of his rail and ate
enough toasted hard bread and crisp fried side-meat to feed a small
family for a week, washing it down with something near a quart of black
coffee sweetened with coarse bro