washed it down with a drink of warm water from his canteen, rolled himself up in his blanket and went to sleep. "There goes reveille," exclaimed Rodney, hitting him a poke in the ribs the next morning about daylight. "But it's in the enemy's camp, and I don't think we'll pay much attention to it. I am going to sleep again." "Say," said one of the men, "I reckon we'd best be toddling along, for if I didn't hear wagons and troops moving all night, I dreamed it. Let's get up and go as far as the diggings any way, and get a bite to eat." The "diggings" referred to was a pile of hard-tack which, when Rodney first saw it, was almost as long and high as the railroad depot. There were several thousand boxes in the pile, and there they had been beside the road, exposed to all sorts of weather, ever since they arrived in Corinth. Why they were not served out to the men instead of lying there to waste no one knew or cared to ask; but every squad that passed that way made it a point to stop long enough to break open a few boxes and fill their haversacks. Toward these "diggings" Dick and his men bent their steps, and before they were fairly out of the woods in which they had slept, they became aware that they had been deserted. There was not a man in sight, and the guns which looked threateningly at them over the top of the nearest redoubt, they found on inspection to be logs of wood. "Beauregard's whole army has fallen back, and done it so silently that they never awoke us," said Dick. "Let us hurry on and get into our lines before some of the enemy's cavalry come along and gobble us up. What do you see, Rodney?" "I am afraid we are gobbled already," was the answer, "I saw some men dodging about in the woods over there. If they are not the enemy's pickets they must be our rear guard, and as we can't get away we had better go over and make ourselves square with them." This proposition met with the approval of his comrades, but it did not seem to suit the men in the woods, for Dick's squad had not gone many steps in their direction when some one called out: "By the right flank, march!" and the command was emphasized by the sudden appearance of half a dozen muskets which were pointed straight at them. "Who are you, and what are you doing there?" demanded Dick. "Who are you, and what do you want of us?" asked one of the men in reply. "Are you from Tennessee?" "No; Missouri." "By the right flank, then, and toddle right along. You want no truck with us; but if you meet old Daddy Bragg tell him to come and see us. We've got something for him."