"Go on with it!" ordered the sergeant as the soldier hesitated. "D'ye think the service has gone to the devil and officers are runnin' errands for enlisted men? An' get back inside two minutes, too," he added with portent in his tone. The subaltern of hardly two months' service felt the implied rebuke of the soldier of over twenty years' and meekly accepted the amendment, but--a thought occurred to him: He had promised Morton paper, envelopes and stamps and the day's newspapers--the lad seemed strangely eager to get all the latter, and vaguely Billy remembered having heard that Canker considered giving papers to prisoners as equivalent to aid and comfort to the enemy. "Take it by way of my tent," said he as they started, and, once there it took time to find things. "Go back to the sergeant-major and tell him I sent you," said Gray, after another search. "He needs you on those papers." And when the officer of the guard returned to the guardhouse and went in to the prisoner, the sergeant saw--and others saw--that, rolled in the soldier's overcoat he carried on his arm, was a bundle done up in newspaper. Moreover, a scrap of conversation was overheard. "There's no one at the General's," said the officer. "I see no way of--fixing it before morning." "My God, lieutenant! There--must be some way out of it! The morning will be too late." "Then I'll do what I can for you to-night," said Mr. Gray as he turned and hurriedly left the guardroom--a dozen men standing stiffly about the walls and doorway and staring with impassive faces straight to the front. Again, the young officer had left the post of the guard and gone up into camp, while far and near through the dim, fog-swept aisles of a score of camps the bugles and trumpets were wailing the signal for "lights out," and shadowy forms with coat collars turned up about the ears or capes muffled around the neck, scurried about the company streets ordering laughter and talk to cease. A covered carriage was standing at the curb outside the officers' gate--as a certain hole in the fence was designated--and the sentry there posted remembered that the officer of the guard came hurrying out and asked the driver if he was engaged. "I'm waiting for the major," was the answer. "Well, where can one order a carriage to-night without going clear to town?" inquired Gray. "I want one--that is--I wish to order one at once." And the driver who knew very well there were several places where carriages could be had, preferred loyalty to his own particular stable away in town, and so declared there was none. "You can telephone there, if you wish, sir," he added. "And wait till morning for it to get here? No! I'll get it--somehow."