s soul toward the skies.{43}

He was much happier than he had ever been before in his life. The trials
of the day before were hardly more than a far-away dream. The fears and
anxieties of the coming battle were forgotten. The ruddy embers became
a radiant vista, which Pride and Hope and Joy filled with all that he
wanted to see. He saw there the dear old home on the Wabash, his father
seated by the evening lamp reading the paper, while his mother knit on
the other side of the table. His sisters were busy with some feminine
trifles, and Annabel had come in to learn the news. They would hear what
he had done, and of the Colonel's words of praise before the regiment,
and his father's heart would glow with pride and his mother's eyes
suffuse with tears. And Annabel but it passed words, passed thought,
almost, what she would say and think.

Just then tattoo rang out clear and musical on the chill night air. The
rattling military "good night" had never before had any special charms
for Si. But now he thought it an unusually sweet composition.

"I declare," he said to Shorty, "that sheepskin band of our'n is
improving. They're getting to play real well. But I ought to write a few
lines home before taps. Got any paper. Shorty?"

"Much paper you'll find in this regiment after that rain," said Shorty
contemptuously, as he knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and started to
fall in for roll-call. "Every mite of paper anybody has was soaked to
spitwads. But mebbe the Orderly might have a sheet."

After roll-call Si went to the Orderly-Sergeant.{44}

Nothing in reason could then be refused Si, and the Orderly tore a
couple of leaves out of the back of his treasured diary, which had
escaped the rain, and handed them to him. Si fished his stub of a pencil
out of his blouse-pocket, laid the paper on the back of a tin plate, and
began:

"Somewhere in Tennessee,
December the 27th, 1862.

"Dere Annabel: We're movin' on Murphysboro,
where we expect a big fite. There's bin fitin' goin'
on ever since we left Nashville, but the 200th Ind.
hain't had no hand in it so far, except this after
noon me and Shorty"

He stopped, stuck his pencil in his mouth, and began to study just what
words he should use to describe the occurrence. He wanted to tell her
all that was bubbling in his heart, and yet he was afraid she would
think him an intolerable boaster, if he told it in just the words
that came to him.