And all this it was which set me to thinking that
night, as I looked on the work, that I might attempt
another enterprise, which, as it proved, lasted me for
years, and which I am now going to describe.

I had worked diligently with the men to set up some
fifty feet of the fence where it parted us from an alley-
way, for I wanted a chance to dry some of the boards,
which had just been hauled from a raft in the North
River. The truckmen had delivered them helter-
skelter, and they lay, still soaking, above each other on
our vacant lot.

We turned all our force on this first piece of fence,
and had so much of it done that, by calling off the men
just before sundown, I was able to set up all the wet
boards, each with one end resting on the fence and the
other on the ground, so that they took the air on both
sides, and would dry more quickly. Of course this left
a long, dark tunnel underneath.

As the other hands gathered up their tools and made
ready to go, a fellow named McLoughlin, who had gone out
with one of the three months' regiments not long before,
said:--

"I would not be sorry to sleep there. I have slept
in many a worse place than that in Dixie"; and on that he
went away, leaving me to make some measurements which I
needed the next day. But what he said rested in my mind,