Gen. Rosecrans," said a familiar voice, "you ordered us to report to
you this mornin' at 10 o'clock. We're here."

The General looked up and saw Corporal Si Klegg and Shorty standing at a
"salute."

"Si!" said the Deacon, joyously, sticking out a hand badly smeared with
honey and butter.

"Pap!" shouted the Corporal, taking the hand in rapture. "How in the
world did you git down here?"

They all laughed now, and the General did not check them.

"Corporal," said he, "I turn this man over to you. I'll hold you
responsible that he don't communicate with the enemy. But come on up
to Headquarters and get your checker-board. I have a very nice one for
you."

{192}

CHAPTER XVI. IN A NEW WORLD

DEACON KLEGG HAS A LITTLE EXPERIENCE OF LIFE IN THE ARMY.

"Pap" said Si, by way of introduction, "this is Shorty, my pardner, and
the best pardner a feller ever had, and the best soldier in the Army of
the Cumberland."

"Glad to see you, Mr. Klegg," said Shorty, reddening and grasping the
father's outstretched hand; "but you orter 've broke that boy o' your'n
o' lyin' when he was young."

"He never did lie," said the Deacon cheerfully, "and I don't believe
he's lyin' now. I've heard a great deal o' you, Mr. Shorty, and I'm sure
he's tellin' the truth about you."

"Drop the Mister, Pap," said Si. "We never call each other Mister here,
except when we're mad."

Si took the carpetsack under his arm, and they trudged up toward Army
Headquarters.

Relieved of anxiety as to his own personal safety, and having found his
son, Deacon Klegg viewed everything around him with open-eyed interest.
It was a wonderfully new and strange world into which the sober,
plodding Indiana farmer had dropped. The men around him spoke the speech
to which his ears were accustomed, but otherwise they were as foreign as
if they had come from the heart of China.{193}

Their dress, their manners, their actions, the ways in which they were
busying themselves, had no resemblance to anything seen on the prosaic
plains of the Wabash in his half-century of life there. The infantry
sweeping over the fields in endless waves, the dashing cavalcades of
officers and staffs, the bewildering whirl of light batteries dazed
him. Even Si awed him. It was hard to recognize in the broad-shouldered,
self-assured young soldier, who seemed so entirely at home in his
startling surroundings, the blundering, bashful hobbledehoy boy of a few
months before, whose fe