To me it was very strange, when we had arranged quarters to suit ourselves and gathered up from the profusion of stores as much provisions as would have served twice our number a full week, to see an expression of something like disappointment on the faces of all. Never were soldiers provided with such luxuries as we at that time; never had the troops won such an easy victory, and yet there was something lacking, as we all felt. We were not bloodthirsty by any manner of means, but it almost shamed us that we had been allowed to work our will in the encampment, and what every member of our company felt was voiced by Archie Gordon when he said: “If there had been only one bloody-back, or a single Tory, however crippled, who would have stood up and exchanged shots with us, I should be better satisfied this minute. To be living here like princes without having spent a single charge of ammunition is much like cheating, and while you fellows will find that I won’t shirk when it comes time to eat, these stores paid for by the king would taste a deal better if we had really earned them.” [Illustration: “‘AND WE ARE TO LEAVE ALL THESE CAMP EQUIPMENTS?’”] So much for our visit--it cannot be called an attack--upon Colonel Tyne. How we lads slept that night! When our beds had been the bare earth, and our blankets only so much of dew as fell from the heavens, we were up and stirring at the first crack of day. But here with a rain-defying covering over us, and a plentiful supply of straw beneath us, it was really painful to be forced to go out and attend to the regular camp duties. I had an idea that even the horses would have been better content had we left them to their repose, instead of disturbing them by pouring in front of each a full day’s supply of grain. “It is too bad,” Archie said as he took upon himself the duties of cook by dexterously toasting slices of sweet bacon in front of the fire Jared Green had built, “that we are to leave all these luxuries so soon. I would truly love to learn by eight and forty hours’ experience how the darling soldiers of the king fare, when not running away from the enemy.” “Then it is in your mind that we shall break camp at once?” Jacob Breen asked, as he threw himself at full length opposite a plate of bark in which Archie was depositing the bacon as fast as it was cooked, and slyly taking therefrom now and then a particularly choice slice when Master Gordon was not looking. “It is in my mind, but not of my mind,” Archie replied. “General Marion is not the kind of a commander who dwaddles away his time in such a place as this. If peradventure we were in the Black Mingo with not enough of dry land on which a fellow might plant both of his feet at the same time, then would there be a possibility of our remaining undisturbed; but as it is, I am counting we will be lucky if it does not become necessary to eat this bacon while in the saddle.”