Story ye second:
When the Forty-eleventh P.M. were camped near Boonesboro', what time the rebels were driven out of Maryland, the colonel of the said regiment duly issued orders that all provender taken by troops under his command should be fairly paid for without defalcation for value received. Now it happened one bright morning that the major of the aforesaid regiment riding out near camp, saw a private deliberately lift up what is known in Southern tongue as a 'rock,' and throwing the same with great skill, instantly kill a small pig that with half a dozen other small pigs were following their mother at full speed away from the neighborhood of this same private.
The soldier, who was an Irishman, picked up the pig, and hiding it under his army sack, was returning to camp, when, lifting up his head, he saw before him the major, who, assuming his most solemn look, thus spoke to him:
'What have you under your coat, there?'
'Shure it's an empty stomach, sirr!—and a small pig that's hurted itself—poor little thing!—and I'm taking it home to mend its leg, to be sure:—the poor crayture wud be after dying if left all alone in the cold, the raw morning.'
The major dearly relished the joke, but discipline is discipline, and there was but one way to overlook this breach of it: that was to punish Paddy by giving him a three-mile walk down the road, and over the fields back to camp, before he could bring his pig in.
'You say the pig is lame?' asked the officer.
'Shure, that's the truth, sirr; and I'm afther belaving it'll niver be able to run any more at all, at all: be the same token its tail's out of curl entirely; and had'nt I better be afther taking it home than letting it die like a haythin in the road here?'
'Do you see that old sow down the road there with those other pigs? you follow her home at once, sir, and leave the lame pig there!'
Saying which, the major continued his ride, and the Irishman duly followed the old sow to—a turn in the road, when he 'obeyed orders,' and left the lame pig 'at home,' where that night at least one mess had roast pig with 'ubi beans ibi patria,' sauce at discretion.