They were both awake by this time, and looked around in amazement. "We went to sleep nice and comfortable, under a wagon last night," said Shorty, slowly recalling the circumstances. "The two Lieutenants and the Orderly had the upper berth, and we slept on the ground-floor." "Yes," assented Si; "and someone's come along, hitched mules to our bedroom and snaked it off." "Just the way in the condemned army," grumbled Shorty, his ill-humor asserting itself as he sat up and looked out over the rain-soaked fields. "Never kin git hold of a good thing but somebody yanks it94 away. S'pose they thought that it was too good for a private soldier, and they took it away for some Major-General to sleep under." A Disagreeable Awakening for Shorty and Si. 94 "Well, I wonder what we're goin' to do for grub?" said Si, as his athletic appetite began to assert itself. "Our own wagons, that we had such a time guarding, are over there in the cedars, and the rebels are filling themselves up with the stuff that we were so good to bring up for them." "It makes me jest sizzle," said Shorty, "to think of all we went through to git them condemned wagons up where they'd be handiest for them." Si walked down the line toward where the Regimental Headquarters were established under a persimmon tree, and presently came back, saying: "They say there's mighty small chance of gettin' any grub to-day. Wheeler burnt three or four miles of our wagons yesterday, and's got possession of the road to Nashville. We've got to fight the battle out on empty stomachs, and drive these whelps away before we kin get a square meal." Jan. 1, 1863, was an exceedingly solemn, unhappy New Year's Day for the Union soldiers on the banks of Stone River. Of the 44,000 who had gone into the line on the evening of Dec. 30, nearly 9,000 had been killed or wounded and about 2,000 were prisoners. The whole right wing of the army had been driven back several miles, to the Nashville Pike. Cannon, wagon-trains, tents and supplies had been captured by the rebel cavalry, which had burned miles of wagons, and the faint-hearted ones murmured that the army would have to surrender or starve. There was not ammunition enough to fight an other battle. The rebel army had suffered as heavily in killed and wounded, but it was standing on its own ground, near its own supplies, and had in addition captured great quantities of ours.96 The mutual slaughter of the two armies had been inconceivably awful inexpressibly ghastly, shuddering, sickening. They had pounded one another to absolute exhaustion, and all that sullen, lowering, sky- weeping Winter's day they lay and glared at one another like two huge lions which had fanged and torn each other until their strength had been entirely expended, and breath and strength were gone. Each was too spent to strike another blow, but each too savagely resolute to think of retreating.