A Down East Yankee had made the discovery that the sutler's whiskey barrel was so placed that one end of it, as it was resting on boxes, touched the canvas. He went around behind the tent, cut a hole through the canvas, and after borrowing a brace and bit from an extra-duty man in the quartermaster's department and a faucet from another comrade in the commissary department. Union men, enlisted to put down the rebellion, had a way of thinking for themselves, and of making observations of what transpired around them, that was exasperatingly fatal to the regular red-tape idea that a soldier was a machine and nothing more. When it became necessary to perform daring deeds in the very jaws of death, the intelligent Yankee volunteers were capable of understanding, he tapped the sutler's whiskey barrel and did a thriving business, the enterprise being advertised by word of mouth through the camp. [Illustration: 8104] It never failed to be noised about that something was in the wind several days before the receipt of orders for any movement of importance. The great multitudes of citizens who bore arms under the flag of the that sacrifice was demanded. And they made it, bravely and without complaint. Whenever a big thing was on the programme it was next to impossible to keep it quiet. The old soldiers seemed to grasp the situation intuitively, and the recruits generally knew more about it, or thought they did, than the generals themselves. There were certain signs in our military existence that came to be accepted as reliable. Orders from brigade headquarters to have the horses well shod at once, meant a cavalry expedition into the enemy's country. Extra ammunition for the light batteries that belonged to the cavalry corps meant that the movement was to be a reconnaissance in force. The assembling of a division or two of infantry in battle trim near the cavalry outposts, with several days' commissary stores in transit, showed that an attempt was to be made to gobble up another slice of the Confederacy or make a break in the communications of the rebels. The issuing of dog tents, extra ammunition and commissary supplies as a rule preceded the starting of an expedition against the enemy. A sudden dashing out of camp, light saddle, and unencumbered with anything but arms and ammunition, in response to a signal from the outposts, always gave rise to the suspicion, frequently confirmed in the heat of battle, that the Johnnies were making an expedition against us.