An officer says, "Captain, you will report immediately for orders." So I wrap my blanket round me, and toil over to the colonel's tent. The colonel is a young man, but an old soldier, and has the only fire in camp. It is close to the tent door--no danger on such a day of the canvas catching fire--the smoke occasionally blows in, but so does the heat, and the colonel says he will keep it up all night. He pitched his tent, too, the moment he arrived, not waiting for the clouds, and did it well. His alone is comfortable--so much for being a "regular," and learning your lessons from experience. The colonel hands me the order, which runs thus--"To-morrow, Captain N. will proceed with a flag of truce to Paris, and remove our wounded, left there at the recent engagement. Should they be held as prisoners of war, he is authorized to make an exchange, and will take with him the surgeon and an ambulance, and four of his own men." The colonel then advises me to see the officer who commanded the late expedition to Paris, and learn from him the names of the wounded, and the roads. I go to his tent and find that he is sick, and has secured a little hospital stove, which puffs and blows like a locomotive baby. There is also an old gentleman there, whose son was taken prisoner by us at Paris. He has brought in the body of an officer who died of his wounds, and he hopes to procure the release of his son, now on his way to St. Louis. Mr. Clokes lives on the Paris road, and it is arranged that he ride back with the surgeon in our ambulance. I plod back to our tent; the water has run in, and it is ankle-deep in mud. Though the sun is hardly down, my two lieutenants have gone to bed, for there is no place to sit up, and nothing to see, or hear, or do. I may as well turn in, too; but there rises a serious question. My boots are mud from top to bottom, and wringing wet. If I pull them off, I may not be able to pull them on, and a man cannot carry a flag of truce without boots. If I leave them on, I shall have to go to bed without my feet, for it will never do to put that mass of mud into your blankets, and they feel like lumps of ice now. What _shall_ I do? I _will_ pull them off, and will get up before reveille (an hour, if necessary) and pull them on again. So I pull off the boots, and lie down in my wet clothes, and wrap myself in my wet blanket, and remember that I have not had anything since a scant noonday dinner.