wn sugar, life began again to have some
charms for him.

"You're sure that dumbed battery's gone that shot at us last night, are
you, Shorty?" he said, as he drained his cup, fastened it again to the
strap of his haversack, and studied the top of the hill with a critical
eye.

"They say it is," said Shorty, between bites. "While you was down at the
crick a man come over from the camp o' the Oshkosh Terrors, and said two
o' their{32} companies 'd been onto the hill, and the rebels had gone."

"I wish them Oshkosh fellers'd mind their own business," said Si,
irritably, as he picked up his gun and began rubbing the mud and rust
off. "They're entirely too fresh for a new regiment. That battery was
none of theirs. It was ours, right in our front, an' if they'd let it
alone till after breakfast we'd gone up and taken it. It was just the
right size for the 200th Ind., and we wanted a chance at it. But now
they've had to stick in and run it off."

"Don't worry," said Shorty, fishing out another cracker; "it hasn't gone
too far. 'Taint lost. You'll have a chance at it some other time. Mebbe
to-day yet."

The army began to move out very promptly, and soon the 200th Ind. was
called to take its place in the long column that crawled over the hills
and across the valleys toward Murfreesboro, like some gigantic blue
serpent moving toward his prey.

Miles ahead of the 200th Ind.'s place in the column the rebels were
offering annoying disputation of farther progress. Lines as brown as
the dried leaves on the oak trees would form on the hilltops, batteries
would gallop into position, and there would be sharp bangs by the cannon
and a sputter of musketry-fire.

Then the long, blue serpent would wriggle out of the road into the
fields, as if coiling to strike. Union batteries would rush on to
hilltops and fire across valleys at the rebel cannon, and a sputter of
musketry would answer that from the leaf-brown ranks on the hilltops,
which would dissolve and march back{33} to the next hilltop, where the
thing would be gone over again. The 200th Ind. would occasionally see
one of these performances as it marched over and down one of the hills.

As the afternoon was wearing away the 200th{34} Ind. kept nearing the
front, where this was going on. Finally, when the dull day was shading
into dusk, and the brigade ahead of it was forming in the field at the
foot of a hill to open a bickering fire against the dun line at the top,
the 200th