Such a laugh as was set up, notwithstanding the grave countenance of the Colonel, was never heard on ordinary occasions.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXVII

In Winter Quarters, 1863 and 1864—­Re-enlistment.

Christmas came as usual to the soldiers as to the rest of the world, and if Longstreet’s men did not have as “merry and happy” a Christmas as those at home, and in the armies outside, they had at least a cheerful one.  Hid away in the dark and mysterious recesses of the houses of many old Unionists, was yet a plentitude of “moon-shine,” and this the soldiers drew out, either by stealth or the eloquent pleadings of a faded Confederate bill.  Poultry abounded in the far away sections of the country, not yet ravaged by either army, which it was a pleasure to those fixtures of the army called “foragers” to hunt up.  The brotherhood of “foragers” was a peculiar institute, and some men take as naturally to it as the duck to water.  They have an eye to business, as well as pleasure, and the life of a “forager” becomes almost an art.  They have a peculiar talent, developed by long practice of nosing out, hunting up, and running to quarry anything in the way of “eatables or drinkables.”  During the most stringent times in a country that had been over-run for years by both armies, some men could find provisions and delicacies, and were never known to be without “one drink left” in their canteens for a needy comrade, who had the proper credentials, the Confederate “shin-plaster.”  These foragers had the instinct (or acquired it) and the gifts of a “knight of the road” of worming out of the good housewife little dainties, cold meats, and stale bread, and if there was one drop of the “oh be joyful” in the house, these men of peculiar intellect would be sure to get it.  So with such an acquisition to the army, and in such a country as East Tennessee, the soldiers did not suffer on that cold Christmas day.  Bright and cheerful fires burned before every tent, over which hung a turkey, a chicken, or a choice slice of Tennessee pork, or, perhaps, better still, a big, fat sausage, with which the smoke-houses along the valleys of the French Broad were filled.

It was my misfortune, or rather good fortune, to be doing picket duty on the Holston on that day.  Here I had an adventure rather out of the regular order in a soldier’s life, one more suited to the character of Don Quixote.  I, as commandant of the post, had strict orders not to allow anyone to cross the river, as “beyond the Alps lie Italy,” beyond the Holston lay the enemy.  But soldiers, like other men, have their trials.  While on duty here a buxom, bouncing, rosy cheeked mountain lass came up, with a sack of corn on her shoulder, and demanded the boat in order that she might cross over to a mill and exchange her corn for meal.  This, of course, I had to reluctantly deny, however gallantly