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.