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Rh when you've heard the news—the rosiest, daintiest bit of news that has ever set this camp hustling as you chaps'll be hustling before you're an hour older.'

"'You'll never be an hour older, Monkey, ef you don't shet down sharp on that skyooting, and say why you've hawked this crowd out from its liquors,' said a long, leather-faced Yankee that we called Uncle Sam, because he happened to be the only American in the camp. As he spoke he reached round to the back of his belt, and Joe thought he'd better reel his news off right away, so he put on the most solemn face he could, and said, as though he was announcing the Day of Judgment:

"'Boys, there's a woman coming to the camp, and she'll be here with the mail inside this blessed hour.'

"If he had told us that the British Royal Family were coming to dig diamonds at Blue