THREE:"Say, Doc," said Shorty, after this was finished and he had devoured a supper cooked under Levi's special care, "I feel so much better that I don't believe there's any need o' my goin on any further. I'll jest lay by here, and go into Convalescent Camp for a few days, and then go back to the front with a squad, and help clean up our cracker line. I'd like awfully well to have a hand in runnin' them rebels offen Lookout Mountain. They've bin too infernally impudent and sassy for any earthly use."The sight of them pained the Deacon's good heart. Instead of the hundreds of well-fed, well-clothed, comfortable-looking young men he had seen at Murfreesboro a few months before, he now saw a shrunken band of gaunt, unkempt men, their clothing ragged and patched, many of them almost shoeless, many of them with pieces of blankets bound around their feet instead of shoes, many of them with bandages about their still unhealed wounds, but still keeping their places bravely with their comrades, and stubbornly refusing to count themselves among the sick and disabled, though it required all their will-power to do their share of the duty. But all of them were brimming over with unconquerable cheerfulness and pluck. They made light of their wounds and disabilities, jested at one another's ragged clothes, laughed at their hunger, teased one another about stealing corn from mules, jeered at the rebel shells from Lookout Mountain, yelled derisively at the rebel pickets across the creek, and promised them to soon come out and run Bragg's army off the face of the earth.
One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams
