CHAPTER V.
A Discomfited Rebel.
Archie stood his watch without seeing or hearing any thing of the rebels, and when he was relieved, at four o'clock, he aroused Simpson, Woods, and his cousin, and after they had tied up their hammocks, and stowed them away in the nettings, Woods went to the sergeant's room to obtain his consent to their proposed excursion. This was easily accomplished, and while they were filling their pockets with musket-cartridges, Frank proposed that they should go out and see what it was that had occasioned the alarm during the night; so they leaned their muskets up in one corner of the cabin, and ran out on the bank, and there, weltering in his blood, lay, not a rebel, but a white mule. He it was that, while feeding about in the woods, had occasioned the disturbance in the bushes, and Frank's shot had done its work. The two men with muskets had existence only in the corporal's imagination. Simpson burst into a loud laugh.
"A nice set of fellows you are," he exclaimed. "I shouldn't want you stationed at my gun in action."
"Why not?" inquired Frank.
"Why, because you can't tell the difference between a mule and a secesh."
Frank made no reply to this, for, although he was very much relieved to find that it was a mule, and not a man, that he had killed, he was a good deal mortified at first, for he expected to be made the laughing-stock of his companions. But he consoled himself with the thought that he was not to blame. The corporal had said that he had seen guerrillas in the woods, and he had, as in duty bound, done his best to drive them away; besides, he would not have fired his gun had he not been ordered to do so.
"It's no matter," said Simpson, who noticed that Frank looked a little crest-fallen; "It was the corporal's fault."
"I know it," said Frank. "But that's poor consolation. I killed the mule, and shall probably be laughed at for it."
"What's the odds?" asked Simpson. "I've seen many a better man than you laughed at. But let us be going, for we have a long way to walk."