The “golonel’s” eyes glistened and he made a motion for the vender to go to the rear of the marquee.  Passing through from the front, he met him at the rear, and the bargain was hastily concluded, Marsh secreting three portly bottles in his chest, and turning the edibles over to Hussey to store in the larder.  There had been a good deal of uneasiness in camp over rumors of cholera, yellow fever, and other dismal epidemics.  When, therefore, the evening after the colonel’s purchase the regimental surgeon was summoned in alarm, it was instantly believed in the regiment that “Old Sauerkraut” was stricken with cholera.  He at first suffered hideous pains in the stomachic regions.  This was followed by a raging thirst, and, unknown to the physician, the three bottles of schnapps were quite emptied.  On the fourth day the poor man, very woe-begone, but now suffering no pain, was carried to the hospital, and the next day, as the campaign was about to begin, he was sent North, to leave room near the field for those who should be wounded in the coming engagement.

Company K was drilling on the wide plateau between the camp and the highway when the ambulance bearing the afflicted officer came slowly over the road worn through the greensward.  Hussey sat solemnly on the seat with the driver, and as the vehicle reached the company, standing at rest, Barney Moore in the rear rank spoke up: 

“Tim, is the poor colonel no better?”

“Divil a betther; it’s worse he’s intirely.  God be good till ’im!”

Neither Jack nor Nick Marsh dared trust himself to meet the other’s eyes as the helpless chief disappeared down the hillside, while Barney entered into an exhaustive treatise on the symptoms of cholera and the liability of the most robust to meet sudden disaster in this malarious upland, circumvailated by ages of decaying matter in the damp swamps on every hand.  But when, an hour later, Company K’s whole street was aroused by peal on peal of Abderian laughter, Jack and Nick were found helpless in their bunks, and Barney was engaged in presenting a potion to settle their collapsed nerves!

“Well, haven’t I won the guinea, now?  It cost me just twice that.  If ye’s have a spark of honor ye’ll pay your just dues, so ye will,” Barney said, in the evening, returning from parade, where Lieutenant-Colonel Grandison officiated as commander, to the unconcealed delight of all but the Oswald parasites among the officers.

“Don’t say a word, Barney—­to whom the medicos of mythology and all the wizards of antique story are clowns and mountebanks—­you shall have the guinea or its equivalent.”

“Twenty-one shillings gold, bear in mind.  Yer father’s a banker, ye ought to know that!”

“I do.  You shall have the twenty-one shillings in the shinplasters of the republic.”

The colonel had been routed none too soon.  The very next morning, when the Caribees “fell in” for roll-call, the orderly received a paper from the commander’s orderly which read, “Tents to be struck at twelve o’clock and the men ready to march, with ten days’ rations.”