He reached the hospital hut, left a report of the dead man and retraced his way through the snow, observing here and there footprints edged with crimson. It made him all the more bitter-eyed and his sharp nose sank nearer his chest. He passed several fires and came again to his own cheerless hut. He tarried only long enough to take an ax leaning by the door and went on, aiming for a stand of timber beyond the brigade street. A certain shapely tree drew him through a deep snowdrift. Getting a position knee deep in the snow, he sank the bitt of the ax into the bark and sent the chips flying. “Guess paw must be doin’ poorly,” he muttered, between blows. “Else why should maw be spendin’ money on a letter? That cussed Bige done said he’d provide fer ’em while I was gone.” But then Bige was only a shiftless cousin, too afraid of his own skin to join the army, and perhaps two years’ providing for the family had set him to grumbling. Born grumblers, all the Jukes. He balanced the ax and measured the fall of the tree; he too, he decided, was a grumbler. His labor was arrested by a sudden disturbance in the street. A lieutenant strode along the line of huts shouting: “Turn out, men! Turn out for grand parade! Turn out, Pennsylvania!” Jukes stared at the graying sky and left the bitt of the ax buried in the tree, determining to finish the chore when he had returned from parade. Floundering through the drift, he reached the street, only to be assailed by an entirely new and unexpected commotion. The men were turning out, no doubt, of that; but they were coming not with muskets and belts, nor in the usual lethargic manner. They emerged from the huts bearing pots and pans, beating them together, sending a racket toward the leaden sky and breaking into a chant that, started by one voice, was immediately taken up by others until the camp rang with it. “No meat, no soldier! No bread, no parade! Poor Dick a-freezin’! No meat, no soldier!” The officer raised his arms futilely while the ragged soldiers made a ring around him. At every instant fresh voices joined the chorus and more pans swelled the tumult. Jukes, elbowing his way to the fore of the circle, saw angry faces, sick faces, faces that were flushed and faces that were ghastly white. The whole affair had an undertone of desperation; they were not men revolting from discipline; they were men who had very nearly reached the limit of endurance. Ill, discouraged, and brooding over the obvious injustices done to them, one man’s catch-phrase had set them off. Jukes’ temper flamed in sympathy. He reached the center of the throng in time to hear the lieutenant, an angry and puzzled man, sing out: “Stop it, men! D’you want to turn this camp upside down? ---- of an example we’ll make for other regiments. Stop the infernal racket!” He was too young to command influence and his words were drowned by the redoubled cry: “No meat, no soldier! No more fire-cake an’ water!”