n to enjoy{201} it while Si and Shorty investigated the contents
of the carpetsack. They found endless fun in its woeful condition. The
butter and honey were smeared over everything, in the rough handling
which it had endured. They pulled out the shirt, the socks, the boots,
the paper and books, and scraped off carefully as much as they could of
the precious honey and butter.

"It's too good to waste the least bit," said Shorty, tasting it from
time to time with unction. "Don't mind a hair or two in the butter, this
time, Si. I kin believe your mother is a good buttermaker. It's the best
I ever tasted."

"Well, the butter and the honey may be spiled," said Si, "but the other
things are all right. My, ain't this a nice shirt. And them socks.
Shorty, did you ever see such socks. Ever so much obliged to you, Pap,
for these boots. Old Hank Sommers's make. He's the best shoemaker in the
State of Injianny. No Quartermaster's cowhide about them. And--"

Si stopped. He had suddenly come across Anna bel's ambrotype. He tried
to slip it into his pocket without the others seeing him. He edged
awkwardly to the door.

"You look over the rest o' the things, Shorty," he said, with a
blush that hid his freckles. "I've got to go down and see the
Orderly-Sergeant."

Shorty and the Deacon exchanged very profound winks.

CHAPTER XVII. THE DEACON'S INITIATION

RAPIDLY ACQUIRES EXPERIENCE OF LIFE IN THE ARMY.

SI ASKED questions of his father about the folks at home and the farm
until the old gentleman's head ached, and he finally fell asleep through
sheer exhaustion.

The next day the Deacon took a comprehensive survey of the house, and
was loud in his praises of Si and Shorty's architecture.

"Beats the cabin I had to take your mother to, Si, when I married her,"
he said with a retrospective look in his eye, "though I'd got up a sight
better one than many o' the boys on the Wabash. Lays a way over the
one that Abe Lincoln's father put up on Pigeon Crick, over in Spencer
County, and where he brung the Widder Johnston when he married her. I
remember it well. About the measliest shack there wuz in the country.
Tom Lincoln, Abe's father, wuz about as lazy as you make 'em. They say
nothin' will cure laziness in a man, but a second wife 'll shake it up
awfully. The Widder Johnston had lots o' git up in her, but she found
Tom Lincoln a dead load. Abe wuz made o' different stuff."

"Yes," continued the father, growing reminiscenti