"You done good work in keepin' the other boys offen 'em, Si," said he. "I was afraid you wouldn't. The only thing I've got agin Co. Q is that the boys will steal. Otherwise they're the nicest kind o' boys."
A couple of days later they got a pass to go down to Murfreesboro' and look the sleepy old town over. They were particularly interested in the quaint old courthouse, which had once been the capitol of Tennessee. They happened into one of the offices, which was entirely deserted. On the wall hung a steel engraving of Jeff Davis in a large oak frame.
"That blamed old rebel picture oughtn't to be hangin' there, Si," observed Shorty.
"Indeed it oughtn't. Jeff ought to be hung to a sour-apple tree, and that glass'd make a nice winder for our house."
"Indeed it would," Shorty started to answer, but time was too precious to waste in speech. In an instant he had shoved an old desk up to the wall, mounted it, and handed the picture down to Si. They wrapped it up in their overcoats, and started back for camp. They had seen enough of Murfreesboro' for that day.
CHAPTER XIII. "HOOSIER'S REST"
SI AND SHORTY CHRISTEN THEIR PLACE AND GIVE A HOUSE-WARMING.
WITH a tin roof, a real door, a glazed window and a plank floor, Si and Shorty's house was by far the most aristocratic in the cantonment of the 200th Ind., if not the entire Winter quarters of the Army of the Cumberland. A marble mansion, with all the modern improvements, could not more proudly overshadow all its neighbors than it did.
Even the Colonel's was no comparison to it. A tent-fly had been made to do duty for a roof at the Colonel's. It could not be stretched evenly and tight. It would persistently sag down in spots, and each of these spots became a reservoir from which would descend an icy stream. A blanket had to serve as a door, and the best substitute for window glass were Commissary blanks greased with fat from headquarters' frying-pan. The floor, instead of being of clean, new plank, as Si's and Shorty's, was made of the warped and weather-beaten boards of a stable, which had been torn down by a fatigue detail.