I remembered then that a law of the Confederacy made it a crime severely punishable to slaughter a sheep, even one’s own. They were wanted by the government for their wool to clothe the army. Waiving all this aside as a matter of small moment, our hostess pressed us again to dismount for supper. At this point Johnny Garrett lied: “Oh, we can’t stay to supper, and the fact is we couldn’t eat if we did. It’s only half an hour since we ate the best part of a ham out of our haversacks. And besides we’ve got to get to Gordonsville to-night.” I am afraid I was accessory after the fact to the telling of that lie. At least I didn’t contradict it. We pushed on a little way till we had got out of sight of the house. Then we stopped by mutual consent under a tree and dismounted. “The grass is pretty good,” I said, “and we’ll let the horses crop it while we wait for it to get good and dark.” It did not seem necessary to mention what we were to wait for darkness for. “Yes,” said Johnny, “there are the sheep, and I’ll keep an eye on them.” When it was thoroughly dark we committed a double crime. It was sheep stealing as well as a violation of the other law, but we were not in a mood to consider such things just then. Under cover of the darkness we killed the fattest sheep in the lot, dressed it as well as we could, and then by the light of some matches I wrote a little note on a leaf from my memorandum book. It said simply this:-- “There is no law to forbid some hungry women to eat a sheep that somebody else has killed in violation of law.” Pinning this to the carcass we carried the mutton to the house, and hung it to a tree where it would be seen with the dawn. We felt as well about this thing as if we had been engaged in some highly moral act. A LITTLE REBEL It was an odd kind of a situation. It was in 1862, and we were on the coast of South Carolina defending the railroad line between Charleston and Savannah. We had no infantry supports, and artillery is supposed to be helpless without such supports. But as there was nothing on the other side, except those pestilent sharp-shooters in the Hayward mansion, we did not need support. It was our business to shell that mansion, burn it, and drive the sharp-shooters out. I may say, parenthetically, that we didn’t like the business. Mr. Hayward, who was familiarly known as “Tiger Bill,” had been the friend of our battery ever since we had succeeded in putting out a fire that had burnt some thousands of panels of fence for him. It is true that his friendship for us was in the main a reflex of his enmity to the Charleston Light Dragoons and the Routledge Mounted Riflemen. He favored us mainly to spite them. Nevertheless he favored us. He sent a wagon every morning to our camp loaded with vegetables, fruits, suckling pigs, and whatever else his dozen plantations might afford. [Illustration: SHE WAS SINGING “DIXIE.”]