"Time your friend was getting back," said I.
"Seems to me so, too," said he; "but I reckin he found a crowd ahead of him."
"How many men in your regiment?" I asked.
"Dunno; there was more'n a thousand at first; not more'n seven or eight hundred, I reckin; how many in your'n?"
"About the same," I replied; "how many in your company?"
"Eighty-two," he said.
The other man returned from the spring.
"Know what I heerd?" he asked.
"No; what was it?" inquired his companion.
"I heard down thar at the branch that the Twelf' No'th Ca'lina was here summers."