“It’s nothin’ to me what the Currnell is in prrivit, so long as he shows us how to whack the rrebs,” said Major Gahogan, commandant of the “Old Tenth.”  “Moses saw God in the burrnin’ bussh, an’ bowed down to it, an’ worrshipt it.  It wasn’t the bussh he worrshipt; it was his God that was in it.  An’ I worr-ship this villin of a Currnell (if he is a villin) because he’s almighty and gives us the vict’ry.  He’s nothin’ but a human burrnin’ bussh, perhaps, but he’s got the god of war in urn.  Adjetant Wallis, it’s a ------ long time between dhrinks, as I think ye was sayin’, an’ with rayson.  See if ye can’t confiscate a canteen of whiskee somewhere in the camp.  Bedad, if I can’t buy it I’ll stale it.  We’re goin’ to fight tomorry, an’ it may be it’s the last chance we’ll have for a dhrink, unless there’s more lik’r now in the other worrld than Dives got.”

The brigade was bivouacked in some invisible region, amid the damp, misty darkness of a September night.  The men lay in their ranks, each with his feet to the front and his head rearward, each covered by his overcoat and pillowed upon his haversack, each with his loaded rifle nestled close beside him.  Asleep as they were, or dropping placidly into slumber, they were ready to start in order to their feet and pour out the red light and harsh roar of combat.  There were two lines of battle, each of three regiments of infantry, the first some two hundred yards in advance of the second.  In the space between them lay two four-gun batteries, one of them brass twelve-pounder “Napoleons,” and the other rifled Parrotts.  To the rear of the infantry were the recumbent troopers and picketed horses of a regiment of cavalry.  All around, in the far, black distance, invisible and inaudible, paced or watched stealthily the sentinels of the grand guards.

There was not a fire, not a torch, nor a star-beam in the whole bivouac to guide the feet of Adjutant Wallis in his pilgrimage after whiskey.  The orders from brigade headquarters had been strict against illuminations, for the Confederates were near at hand in force, and a surprise was proposed as well as feared.  A tired and sleepy youngster, almost dropping with the heavy somnolence of wearied adolescence, he stumbled on through the trials of an undiscernible and unfamiliar footing, lifting his heavy riding-boots sluggishly over imaginary obstacles, and fearing the while lest his toil were labor misspent.  It was a dry camp, he felt dolefully certain, or there would have been more noise in it.  He fell over a sleeping sergeant, and said to him hastily, “Steady, man—­a friend!” as the half-roused soldier clutched his rifle.  Then he found a lieutenant, and shook him in vain; further on a captain, and exchanged saddening murmurs with him; further still a camp-follower of African extraction, and blasphemed him.

“It’s a God-forsaken camp, and there isn’t a horn in it,” said Adjutant Wallis to himself as he pursued his groping journey.  “Bet you I don’t find the first drop,” he continued, for he was a betting boy, and frequently argued by wagers, even with himself.  “Bet you two to one I don’t.  Bet you three to one—­ten to one.”