its admiration and even its enthusiastic devotion, though he be as
pitiless and as wicked as Lucifer.

"It's nothin' to me what the Currnell is in prrivit, so long as he
shows us how to whack the rrebs," said Major Gahogan, commandant of the
"Old Tenth." "Moses saw God in the burrnin' bussh, an' bowed down to
it, an' worrshipt it. It wasn't the bussh he worrshipt; it was his God
that was in it. An' I worr-ship this villin of a Currnell (if he is a
villin) because he's almighty and gives us the vict'ry. He's nothin'
but a human burrnin' bussh, perhaps, but he's got the god of war in
urn. Adjetant Wallis, it's a ------ long time between dhrinks, as I
think ye was sayin', an' with rayson. See if ye can't confiscate a
canteen of whiskee somewhere in the camp. Bedad, if I can't buy it I'll
stale it. We're goin' to fight tomorry, an' it may be it's the last
chance we'll have for a dhrink, unless there's more lik'r now in the
other worrld than Dives got."

The brigade was bivouacked in some invisible region, amid the damp,
misty darkness of a September night. The men lay in their ranks, each
with his feet to the front and his head rearward, each covered by his
overcoat and pillowed upon his haversack, each with his loaded rifle
nestled close beside him. Asleep as they were, or dropping placidly
into slumber, they were ready to start in order to their feet and pour
out the red light and harsh roar of combat. There were two lines of
battle, each of three regiments of infantry, the first some two hundred
yards in advance of the second. In the space between them lay two
four-gun batteries, one of them brass twelve-pounder "Napoleons," and
the other rifled Parrotts. To the rear of the infantry were the
recumbent troopers and picketed horses of a regiment of cavalry. All
around, in the far, black distance, invisible and inaudible, paced or