Government gits all sorts o' damn fools for $13 a month."     

       Si was so delighted at getting Pete back unhurt that he did not have the heart to reply to the engineer's gibes.     

  

       CHAPTER II. SI AND SHORTY COME VERY NEAR LOSING THEIR BOYS.     

       ALL healthy boys have a strong tincture of the savage in them. The savage alternately worships his gods with blind, unreasoning idolatry, or treats them with measureless contumely.     

       Boys do the same with their heroes. It is either fervent admiration, or profound distrust, merging into actual contempt. After the successful little skirmish with the guerrillas the boys were wild in their enthusiasm over Si and Shorty. They could not be made to believe that Gens. Grant, Sherman or Thomas could conduct a battle better. But the moment that Si and Shorty seemed dazed by the multitude into which they were launched, a revulsion of feeling developed, which soon threatened to be ruinous to the partners' ascendancy.     

       During the uncomfortable, wakeful night the prestige of the partners still further diminished. In their absence the army had been turned topsy-turvy and reorganized in a most bewildering way. The old familiar guide-marks had disappeared. Two of the great corps had been abolished—consolidated into one, with a new number and a strange commander. Two corps of strange troops had come in from the Army of the Potomac, and had been consolidated into one, taking an old corps' number. Divisions, brigades and regiments had been totally changed in commanders, formation and position. Then the Army of the Tennessee had come in, to complicate the seeming muddle, and the more that Si and Shorty cross-questioned such stragglers as came by the clearer it seemed to the boys that they were hopelessly bewildered, and the more depressed the youngsters became.     

       The morning brought no relief. Si and Shorty talked together, standing apart from the squad, and casting anxious glances over the swirling mass of army activity, which the boys did not fail to note and read with dismal forebodings.     

       "I do believe they're lost," whimpered little Pete Skidmore. "What in goodness will ever become of us, if we're lost in this awful wilderness?"     

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