The Stonewall fell to getting breakfast—big tin cups of scalding coffee! sugar! fresh meat! double allowance of meal! They broiled the meat on sharpened sticks, using the skillets for batter bread; they grinned at the sugar before they dropped it in, they purred over the coffee. Mingling with the entrancing odours was the consciousness of having marched well, fought well, deserved well. Down the pike, where Taylor kept the rear, burst a rattle of musketry. The Stonewall scrambled to its feet. "What's that? Darn it all! the Virginia Reel's beginning!" An officer hurried by. "Sit down, boys. It's just a minuet—reconnoissance of Fremont and Dick Taylor! It's all right. Those Louisianians are damned good dancers!" A courier quitting the knoll above the pike gave further information. "Skirmish back there, near the Capon road. Just a feeler of Fremont's—his army's three miles over there in the woods. Old Dick's with General Taylor. Don't need your help, boys—thank you all the same! Fremont won't attack in force. Old Jack says so—sitting up there on a hickory stump reading the Book of Kings!"

"All right," said the Stonewall. "We ain't the kind to go butting in without an invitation! We're as modest as we are brave. Listen! The blue coats are using minies."

Down the pike, during an hour of dewy morning, the Louisiana Brigade and Fremont's advance fired at each other. The woods hereabouts were dense. At intervals the blue showed; at intervals Ewell dispatched a regiment which drove them back to cover. "Old Dick" would have loved to follow, but he was under orders. He fidgeted to and fro on Rifle. "Old Jackson says I am not to go far from the pike! I want to go after those men. I want to chase them to the Rio Grande! I am sick of this fiddling about! Just listen to that, General Taylor! There's a lot of them in the woods! What's the good of being a major-general if you've got to stick close to the pike? If Old Jackson were here he would say Go! Why ain't he here? Bet you anything you like he's sucking a lemon and holding morning prayer meeting!—Oh, here are your men back with prisoners! Now, you men in blue, what command's that in the woods? Eh?—What?" "Von Bayern bin ich nach diesem Lande gekommen." "Am Rhein habe ich gehort dass viel bezahlt wird fur...." "Take 'em away! Semmes, you go and tell General Jackson all Europe's here.—Mean you to go? Of course I don't mean you to go, you thundering idiot! Always could pick Caesar out of the crowd. When I find him I obey him, I don't send him messages. ——! —— ——! They've developed sharpshooters. Send Wheat over there, General Taylor—tell him to shake the pig-nuts out of those trees!"

Toward midday the army marched. All the long afternoon it moved to the sound of musketry up the Valley pike. There was skirmishing in plenty—dashes by Fremont's cavalry, repulsed by the grey, a short stampede of Munford's troopers, driven up the pike and into the infantry of the rear guard, rapid recovery and a Roland for an Oliver. The Valley, shimmering in the June light, lay in anything but Sabbath calm. Farmhouse and village, mill, smithy, tavern, cross-roads store, held their breath—Stonewall Jackson coming up the pike, holding Fremont off with one hand while he passes Shields.

Sunset came, a splendid flare of colour behind the Great North Mountain. The army halted for the night. The Louisiana Brigade still formed the rear guard. Drawn upon high ground to either side of the pike, it lighted no fires and rested on its arms. Next it to the south lay Winder. The night was clear and dark, the pike a pale limestone gleam between the shadowy hills. Hour by hour there sounded a clattering of hoofs, squads of cavalry, reports, couriers, staff. There was, too, a sense of Stonewall Jackson somewhere on the pike, alert with grey-blue eyes piercing the dark. Toward one o'clock firing burst out on the north. It proved an affair of outposts. Later, shots rang out close at hand, Fremont having ordered a cavalry reconnoissance. The grey met it with clangour and pushed it back. Wheat's battalion was ordered northward and went swinging down the pike. The blue cavalry swarmed again, whereupon the Louisianians deployed, knelt first rank, fired rear rank, rose and went forward, knelt, fired and dispersed the swarm. From a ridge to the west opened a Federal gun. It had intent to rake the pike, but was trained too high. The shells hurtled overhead, exploding high in air. The cannonade ceased as suddenly as it had begun. Day began to break in violet and daffodil.

As the hours went on they became fiery hot and dry. The dust cloud was high again over advance with great wagon train, over main column and rear. Water was scarce, the men horribly weary; all suffered. Suffering or ease, pain or pleasure, there was no resting this day. Fremont, using parallel roads, hung upon the right; he must be pushed back to the mountains as they passed up the Valley pike. All morning blue cavalry menaced the Stonewall; to the north a dense southward moving cloud proclaimed a larger force. Mid-day found Winder deployed on both sides of the pike, with four guns in position. The Louisianians sent back to know if they could help. "No—we'll manage." A minute later Jackson appeared. Wherever matters drew suddenly to a point, there he was miraculously found. He looked at the guns and jerked his hand in the air. "General Winder, I do not wish an engagement here. Withdraw your brigade, sir, regiment by regiment. General Ashby is here. He will keep the rear."

Ashby came at the moment with a body of horse out of the wood to the east. He checked the black stallion, saluted and made his report. "I have burned the Conrad Store, White House and Columbia bridges, sir. If Shields wishes to cross he must swim the Shenandoah. It is much swollen. I have left Massanutton Gap strongly guarded."

"Good! good! General Winder, you will follow General Taylor. Tell the men that I wish them to press on. General Ashby, the march is now to proceed undisturbed."

The second of June burned onward to its close, through heat, dust, thirst, and relentlessly rapid marching. In the late afternoon occurred a monstrous piling up of thunder clouds, a whistling of wind, and a great downpour of rain. It beat down the wheat and pattered like elfin bullets on the forest leaves. Through this fusillade the army came down to the west fork of the Shenandoah. Pioneers laid a bridge of wagons, and, brigade by brigade, the army crossed. High on the bank in the loud wind and dashing rain, Jackson on Little Sorrel watched the transit. By dusk all were over and the bridge was taken up.

On the further shore Ashby now kept guard between Fremont and the host in grey. As for Shields, he was on the far side of the Massanuttons, before him a bridgeless, swollen torrent and a guarded mountain pass. Before becoming dangerous he must move south and round the Massanuttons. Far from achieving junction, space had widened between Shields and Fremont. The Army of the Valley had run the gauntlet, and in doing so had pushed the walls apart. The men, climbing from the Shenandoah, saluting their general, above them there in the wind and the rain, thought the voice with which he answered them unusually gentle. He almost always spoke to his troops gently, but to-night there was almost a fatherly tone. And though he jerked his hand into the air, it was meditatively done, a quiet salute to some observant commander up there.

Later, in the deep darkness, the army bivouacked near New Market. Headquarters was established in an old mill. Here a dripping courier unwrapped from a bit of cloth several leaves of the whitey-brown telegraph paper of the Confederacy and gave them into the general's hand.

Next morning, at roll call, each colonel spoke to his regiment. "Men! There has been a great battle before Richmond—at a place called Seven Pines. Day before yesterday General Johnston attacked General McClellan. The battle raged all day with varying fortune. At sunset General Johnston, in the thickest of the fight, was struck from his horse by a shell. He is desperately wounded; the country prays not mortally. General Lee is now in command of the Armies of Virginia. The battle was resumed yesterday morning and lasted until late in the day. Each side claims the victory. Our loss is perhaps five thousand; we hold that the enemy's was as great. General McClellan has returned to his camp upon the banks of the Chickahominy. Richmond is not taken.—The general commanding the Army of the Valley congratulates his men upon the part they have played in the operations before our capital. At seven in the morning the chaplains of the respective regiments will hold divine services."



CHAPTER XXV

ASHBY

Flournoy and Munford, transferred to Ashby's command, kept with him in the Confederate rear. The army marching from the Shenandoah left the cavalry behind in the wind and rain to burn the bridge and delay Fremont. Ashby, high on the eastern bank, watched the slow flames seize the timbers, fight with the wet, prevail and mount. The black stallion planted his fore feet, shook his head, snuffed the air. The wind blew out his rider's cloak. In the light from the burning bridge the scarlet lining glowed and gleamed like the battle-flag. The stallion neighed. Ashby's voice rose ringingly. "Chew, get the Blakeley ready! Wyndham's on the other side!"

The flames mounted high, a great pyre streaming up, reddening the night, the roaring Shenandoah, the wet and glistening woods. Out of the darkness to the north came Maury Stafford with a scouting party. He saluted. "There is a considerable force over there, sir, double-quicking through the woods to save the bridge. Cavalry in front—Wyndham, I suppose, still bent on 'bagging' you."

"Here they are!" said Ashby. "But you are too late, Colonel Sir Percy Wyndham!"

The blazing arch across the river threw a wine-red light up and down and showed cavalry massing beneath walnut, oak, and pine. There were trumpet signals and a great trampling of hoofs, but the roaring flames, the swollen torrent, the pattering rain, the flaws of wind somewhat dulled other sounds. A tall man with sash and sabre, thigh boots and marvellously long moustaches, sat his horse beneath a dripping, wind-tossed pine. He pointed to the grey troopers up and down the southern bank. "There's the quarry! Fire!"

Two could play at that game. The flash from the northern bank and the rattle of the carbines were met from the southern by as vivid a leaping spark, as loud a sound. With the New Jersey squadrons was a Parrott gun. It was brought up, placed and fired. The shell exploded as it touched the red-lit water. There was a Versailles fountain costing nothing. The Blakeley answered. The grey began to sing.

"If you want to have a good time— If you want to have a good time— If you want to catch the devil, Jine the cavalry!"

A courier appeared beside Ashby. "General Jackson wants to know, sir, if they can cross?"

"Look at the bridge and tell him, No."

"Then he says to fall back. Ammunition's precious."

The cavalry leader put to his lips the fairy clarion slung from his shoulder and sounded the retreat. The flaming bridge lit all the place and showed the great black horse and him upon it. The English adventurer across the water had with him sharpshooters. In the light that wavered, leaped and died, and sprang again, these had striven in vain to reach that high-placed target. Now one succeeded.

The ball entered the black's side. He had stood like a rock, now he veered like a ship in a storm. Ashby dropped the bugle, threw his leg over the saddle, and sprang to the earth as the great horse sank. Those near him came about him. "No! I am not hurt, but Black Conrad is. My poor friend!" He stroked Black Conrad, kissed him between the eyes and drew his pistol. Chew fired the Blakeley again, drowning all lesser sound. Suddenly the supports of the bridge gave way. A great part of the roaring mass fell into the stream; the remainder, toward the southern shore, flamed higher and higher. The long rattle of the Federal carbines had an angry sound. They might have marched more swiftly after all, seeing that Stonewall Jackson would not march more slowly! Build a bridge! How could they build a bridge over the wide stream, angry itself, hoarsely and violently thrusting its way under an inky, tempestuous sky! They had no need to spare ammunition, and so they fired recklessly, cannon, carbine, and revolvers into the night after the grey, retiring squadrons.

Stafford, no great favourite with the mass of the men, but well liked by some, rode beside a fellow officer. This was a man genial and shrewd, who played the game of war as he played that of whist, eyes half closed and memory holding every card. He spoke cheerfully. "Shenandoah beautifully swollen! Don't believe Fremont has pontoons. He's out of the reckoning for at least a day and a night—probably longer. Nice for us all!"

"It has been a remarkable campaign."

"'Remarkable'! Tell you what it's like, Stafford. It's like 1796—Napoleon's Italian campaign."

"You think so? Well, it may be true. Hear the wind in the pines!"

"Tell you what you lack, Stafford. You lack interest in the war. You are too damned perfunctory. You take orders like an automaton, and you go execute them like an automaton. I don't say that they're not beautifully executed; they are. But the soul's not there. The other day at Tom's Brook I watched you walk your horse up to the muzzle of that fellow Wyndham's guns, and, by God! I don't believe you knew any more than an automaton that the guns were there!"

"Yes, I did—"

"Well, you may have known it with one half of your brain. You didn't with the other half. To a certain extent, I can read your hand. You've got a big war of your own, in a country of your own—eh?"

"Perhaps you are not altogether wrong. Such things happen sometimes."

"Yes, they do. But I think it a pity! This war"—he jerked his head toward the environing night—"is big enough, with horribly big stakes. If I were you, I'd drum the individual out of camp."

"Think only of the general? I wish I could!"

"Well, can't you?"

"No, not yet."

"There are only two things—barring disease—which can so split the brain in two—send the biggest part off, knight-errant or Saracen, into some No-Man's Country, and keep the other piece here in Virginia to crack invaders' skulls! One's love and one's hate—"

"Never both?"

"Knight-errant and Saracen in one? That's difficult."

"Nothing is so difficult as life, nor so strange. And, perhaps, love and hate are both illnesses. Sometimes I think so."

"A happy recovery then! You are too good a fellow—"

"I am not a good fellow."

"You are not at least an amiable one to-night! Don't let the fever get too high!"

"Will you listen," said Stafford, "to the wind in the pines? and did you ever see the automatic chess-player?"

Two days later, Fremont, having bridged the Shenandoah, crossed, and pushed his cavalry with an infantry support southward by the pike. About three in the afternoon of the sixth, Ashby's horses were grazing in the green fields south of Harrisonburg, on the Port Republic road. To the west stretched a belt of woodland, eastward rose a low ridge clad with beech and oak. The green valley lay between. The air, to-day, was soft and sweet, the long billows of the Blue Ridge seen dreamily, through an amethyst haze. The men lay among dandelions. Some watched the horses; others read letters from home, or, haversack for desk, wrote some vivid, short-sentenced scrawl. A number were engaged by the rim of the clear pool. Naked to the waist, they knelt like washerwomen, and rubbed the soapless linen against smooth stones, or wrung it wrathfully, or turning, spread it, grey-white, upon the grass to dry. Four played poker beneath a tree, one read a Greek New Testament, six had found a small turtle, and with the happy importance of boys were preparing a brushwood fire and the camp kettle. Others slept, head pillowed on arm, soft felt hat drawn over eyes. The rolling woodland toward Harrisonburg and Fremont was heavily picketed. A man rose from beside the pool, straightened himself, and holding up the shirt he had been washing looked at it critically. Apparently it passed muster, for he painstakingly stretched it upon the grass and taking a pair of cotton drawers turned again to the water. A blue-eyed Loudoun youth whistling "Swanee River" brought a brimming bucket from the stream that made the pool and poured it gleefully into the kettle. A Prince Edward man, lying chest downward, blew the fire, another lifted the turtle. The horses moved toward what seemed lusher grass, one of the poker players said "Damn!" the reader turned a leaf of the Greek Testament. One of the sleepers sat up. "I thought I heard a shot—"

Perhaps he had heard one; at any rate he now heard many. Down the road and out from under the great trees of the forest in front burst the pickets driven in by a sudden, well-directed onslaught of blue cavalry—Fremont's advance with a brigade of infantry behind. In a moment all was haste and noise in the green vale. Men leaped to their feet, left their washing, left the turtle simmering in the pot, the gay cards upon the greensward, put up the Greek Testament, the home letters, snatched belt and carbine, caught the horses, saddled them with speed, swung themselves up, and trotted into line, eyes front—Ashby's men.

The pickets had their tale to tell. "Burst out of the wood—the damned Briton again, sir, with his squadrons from New Jersey! Rode us down—John Ferrar killed—Gilbert captured—You can see from the hilltop there. They are forming for a charge. There's infantry behind—Blinker's Dutch from the looks of them!"

"Blinker's Dutch," said the troopers. "'Hooney,' 'Nix furstay,' 'Bag Jackson,' 'Kiss und steal,' 'Hide under bed,' 'Rifle bureau drawers,' 'Take lockets und rings'—Blinker's Dutch! We should have dog whips!"

To the rear was the little ridge clothed with beech and oak. The road wound up and over it. Ashby's bugle sounded. "Right face. Trot! March!" The road went gently up, grass on either side with here and there a clump of small pines. Butterflies fluttered; all was gay and sweet in the June sunshine. Ashby rode before on the bay stallion. The Horse Artillery came also from the meadow where it had been camped—Captain Chew, aged nineteen, and his three guns and his threescore men, four of them among the best gunners in the whole army. All mounted the ridge, halted and deployed. The guns were posted advantageously, the 6th, the 7th, and the 2d Virginia Cavalry in two ranks along the ridge. Wide-spreading beech boughs, growing low, small oak scrub and branchy dogwood made a screen of the best; they looked down, hidden, upon a gentle slope and the Port Republic road. Ashby's post was in front of the silver bole of a great beech. With one gauntleted hand he held the bay stallion quiet, with the other he shaded his eyes and gazed at the westerly wood into which ran the road. Chew, to his right, touched the Blakeley lovingly. Gunner number 1 handed the powder. Number 2 rammed it home, took the shell from Number 1 and put it in. All along the ridge the horsemen handled their carbines, spoke each in a quiet, genial tone to his horse. Sound of the approaching force made itself heard and increased.

"About a thousand, shouldn't you think, sir?" asked an aide.

"No. Between seven and eight hundred. Do you remember in 'Ivanhoe'—"

Out of the western wood, in order of charge, issued a body of horse. It was yet a little distant, horses at a trot, the declining sun making a stirring picture. Rapidly crescent to eye and ear, they came on. Their colours flew, the sound of their bugles raised the blood. Their pace changed to a gallop. The thundering hoofs, the braying trumpets, shook the air. Colours and guidons grew large.

"By God, sir, Wyndham is coming to eat you up! This time he knows he's caught the hare."

"Do all John Bulls ride like that? Shades of the Revolution! did we all ride like that before we came to Virginia?"

"God! what a noise!"

Ashby spoke. "Don't fire till you see the whites of their eyes."

The charge began to swallow up the gentle slope, the sunny road, the green grass to either hand. The bugles blew at height, the sabres gleamed, the tall man in front rode rising in his stirrups, his sabre overhead. "Huzzah! huzzah! huzzah!" shouted the blue cavalry.

"Are you ready, Captain Chew?" demanded Ashby. "Very well, then, let them have it!"

The Blakeley and the two Parrott guns spoke in one breath. While the echoes were yet thundering, burst a fierce volley from all the Confederate short rifles. Down went the Federal colour-bearer, down went other troopers in the front rank, down went the great gaunt horse beneath the Englishman! Those behind could not at once check their headlong gallop; they surged upon and over the fallen. The Blakeley blazed again and the grey carbines rang. The Englishman was on his feet, had a trooper's horse and was shouting like a savage, urging the squadrons on and up. For the third time the woods flamed and rang. The blue lines wavered. Some horsemen turned. "Damn you! On!" raged Wyndham.

Ashby put his bugle to his lips. Clear and sweet rose the notes, a silver tempest. "Ashby! Ashby!" shouted the grey lines and charged. "Ashby! Ashby!" Out of the woods and down the hill they came like undyked waters. The two tides met and clashed. There followed a wild melee, a shouting, an unconscious putting forth of great muscular energy, a seeing as through red glasses besmirched with powder smoke, a poisonous odour, a sense of cotton in the mouth, a feeling as of struggle on a turret, far, far up, with empty space around and below. The grey prevailed, the blue turned and fled. For a moment it seemed as though they were flying through the air, falling, falling! the grey had a sense of dizziness as they struck spur in flank and pursued headlong. All seemed to be sinking through the air, then, suddenly, they felt ground, exhaled breath, and went thundering up the Port Republic road, toward Harrisonburg. In front strained the blue, presently reaching the wood. A gun boomed from a slope beyond. Ashby checked the pursuit and listened to the report of a vedette. "Fremont pushing forward. Horse and guns and the German division. Hm!" He sat the bay stallion, looking about him, then, "Cuninghame, you go back to General Ewell. Rear guard can't be more than three miles away. Tell General Ewell about the Germans and ask him to give me a little infantry. Hurry now, and if he gives them, bring them up quickly!"

The vedette galloped eastward. Ashby and his men rode back to the ridge, the Horse Artillery, the dead, the wounded, and the prisoners. The latter numbered four officers and forty men. They were all in a group in the sunshine, which lay with softness upon the short grass and the little pine trees. The dead lay huddled, while over them flitted the butterflies. Ashby's surgeons were busy with the wounded. A man with a shattered jaw was making signs, deliberately talking in the deaf-and-dumb alphabet, which perhaps he had learned for some friend or relative's sake. A younger man, his hand clenched over a wound in the breast, said monotonously, over and over again, "I am from Trenton, New Jersey, I am from Trenton, New Jersey." A third with glazing eyes made the sign of the cross, drew himself out of the sun, under one of the little pine trees, and died. Some of the prisoners were silent. Others talked with bravado to their captors. "Salisbury, North Carolina! That's not far. Five hundred miles not far—Besides, Fremont will make a rescue presently. And if he doesn't, Shields will to-morrow! Then off you fellows go to Johnson's Island!" The officer who had led the charge sat on a bank above the road. In the onset he had raged like a Berserker, now he sat imperturbable, ruddy and stolid, an English philosopher on a fallen pine. Ashby came back to the road, dismounting, and leading the bay stallion, advanced. "Good-day, Colonel Wyndham."

"Good-day, General Ashby. War's a game. Somebody's got to lose. Only way to stop loss is to stop war. You held the trumps—Damn me! You played them well, too." His sword lay across his knees. He took it up and held it out. Ashby made a gesture of refusal. "No. I don't want it. I am about to send you to the rear. If there is anything I can do for you—"

"Thank you, general, there is nothing. Soldier of fortune. Fortune of war. Bad place for a charge. Ought to have been more wary. Served me right. You've got Bob Wheat with you? Know Bob Wheat. Find him in the rear?"

"Yes. With General Ewell. And now as I am somewhat in haste—"

"You must bid me good-day! See you are caring for my wounded. Much obliged. Dead will take care of themselves. Pretty little place! Flowers, butterflies—large bronze one on your hat.—This our escort? Perfectly true you'll have a fight presently. There's the New York cavalry as well as the New Jersey—plenty of infantry—Pennsylvania Bucktails and so forth. Wish I could see the scrimmage! Curious world! Can't wish you good luck. Must wish you ill. However, good luck's wrapped up in all kinds of curious bundles. Ready, men! General Ashby, may I present Major Markham, Captain Bondurant, Captain Schmidt, Lieutenant Colter? They will wish to remember having met you.—Now, gentlemen, at your service!"

Prisoners and escort vanished over the hill. Ashby, remounting, proceeded to make his dispositions, beginning with the Horse Artillery which he posted on a rise of ground, behind a mask of black thorn and dogwood. From the east arose the strains of fife and drum. "Maryland Line," said the 6th, the 7th, and the 2d Virginia Cavalry.

I hear the distant thunder hum, Maryland!

The old line bugle, fife and drum, Maryland! She breathes! She burns! she'll come! she'll come—

"Oh! here's the 58th, too! Give them a cheer, boys! Hurrah! 58th Virginia! Hurrah! The Maryland Line!"

The two infantry regiments came forward at a double-quick, bright and brisk, rifle barrels and bayonets gleaming in the now late sunshine, their regimental flags azure and white, and beside them streaming the red battle-flag with the blue cross. As they approached there also began to show, at the edge of the forest which cut the western horizon, the Federal horse and foot. Before these was a space of rolling fields, then a ragged line of timber, a straggling copse of underbrush and tall trees cresting a wave of earth. A body of blue cavalry started out of the wood, across the field. At once Chew opened with the Blakeley and the two Parrotts. There ensued confusion and the horse fell back. A blue infantry regiment issued at a run, crossed the open and attained the cover of the coppice which commanded the road and the eastern stretch of fields. A second prepared to follow. The Maryland Line swung through the woods with orders to flank this movement. Ashby galloped to the 58th. "Forward, 58th, and clear that wood!" He rode on to Munford at the head of the squadrons. "I am going to dislodge them from that cover. The moment they leave it sound the charge!"

The 58th advanced steadily over the open. When it was almost upon the coppice it fired, then fixed bayonets. The discharge had been aimed at the wood merely. The shadows were lengthening, the undergrowth was thick; they could not see their opponents. Suddenly the coppice blazed, a well-directed and fatal volley. The regiment that held this wood had a good record and meant to-day to better it. Its target was visible enough, and close, full before it in the last golden light. A grey officer fell, the sword that he had brandished described a shining curve before it plunged into a clump of sumach. Five men lay upon the earth; the colour-bearer reeled, then pitched forward. The man behind him caught the colours. The 58th fired again, then, desperately, continued its advance. Smoke and flame burst again from the coppice. A voice of Stentor was heard. "Now Pennsylvania Bucktails, you're making history! Do your durndest!"

"Close ranks!" shouted the officer of the 58th. "Close ranks! Forward!" There came a withering volley. The second colour-bearer sank; a third seized the standard. Another officer was down; there were gaps in the ranks and under feet the wounded. The regiment wavered.

From the left came a bay stallion, devouring the earth, legs and head one tawny line, distended nostril and red-lit eye. The rider loosened from his shoulders a scarlet-lined cloak, lifted and shook it in the air. It flared out with the wind of his coming, like a banner, or a torch. He sent his voice before him, "Charge, men, charge!"

Spasmodically the 58th started forward. The copse, all dim and smoky, flowered again, three hundred red points of fire. The sound was crushing, startling, beating at the ear drum. The Bucktails were shouting, "Come on, Johnny Reb! Go back, Johnny Reb! Don't know what you want to do, do you, Johnny Reb?"

Ashby and the bay reached the front of the regiment. There was disorder, wavering, from underfoot groans and cries. So wrapped in smoke was the scene, so dusk, with the ragged and mournful woods hiding the low sun, that it was hard to distinguish the wounded. It seemed as though it was the earth herself complaining.

"On, on, men!" cried Ashby. "Help's coming—the Maryland Line!" There was a wavering answer, half cheer, half-wailing cry, "Ashby! Ashby!" Two balls pierced the bay stallion. He reared, screamed loudly, and fell backward. Before he touched the earth the great horseman of the Valley was clear of him. In the smoke and din Ashby leaped forward, waving the red-lined cloak above his head. "Charge, men!" he cried. "For God's sake, charge!" A bullet found his heart. He fell without a groan, his hand and arm wrapped in the red folds.

From rank to rank there passed something like a sobbing cry. The 58th charged. Bradley Johnson with the Maryland Line dislodged the Bucktails, captured their colonel and many others, killed and wounded many. The coppice, from soaked mould to smoky treetop, hung in the twilight like a wood in Hades. It was full dusk when Fremont's advance drew back, retreating sullenly to its camp at Harrisonburg. The stars were all out when, having placed the body on a litter, Ashby's men carried Ashby to Port Republic.

He lay at midnight in a room of an old house of the place. They had laid him upon a narrow bed, an old, single four-poster, with tester and valance. The white canopy above, the fall of the white below had an effect of sculptured stone. The whole looked like an old tomb in some dim abbey. The room was half in light, half in darkness. The village women had brought flowers; of these there was no lack. All the blossoms of June were heaped about him. He lay in uniform, upon the red-lined cloak, his plumed hat beside him, his sword in his hand. His staff watched in the room, seated with bowed heads beside the open window. An hour before dawn some one spoke to the sentry without the door, then gently turned the handle and entered the chamber. The watchers arose, stood at salute. "Kindly leave General Ashby and me alone together for a little while, gentlemen," said the visitor. The officers filed out. The last one turning softly to close the door saw Jackson kneel.



CHAPTER XXVI

THE BRIDGE AT PORT REPUBLIC

The seventh of June was passed by the Army of the Valley in a quiet that seemed unnatural. For fifteen days, north from Front Royal to Harper's Ferry, south from Harper's Ferry to Port Republic, cannon had thundered, musketry rattled. Battle here and battle there, and endless skirmishing! "One male and three foights a day," said Wheat's Irishmen. But this Saturday there was no fighting. The cavalry watched both flanks of the Massanuttons. The main army rested in the rich woods that covered the hills above the North Fork of the Shenandoah. Headquarters were in the village across the river, spanned by a covered bridge. Three miles to the northwest Ewell's division was strongly posted near the hamlet of Cross Keys. From the great south peak of the Massanuttons a signal party looked down upon Fremont's road from Harrisonburg, and upon the road by which Shields must emerge from the Luray Valley. The signal officer, looking through his glass, saw also a road that ran from Port Republic by Brown's Gap over the Blue Ridge into Albemarle, and along this road moved a cortege—soldiers with the body of Ashby. The dead general's mother was in Winchester. They would have taken him there, but could not, for Fremont's army was between. So, as seemed next most fit, they carried him across the mountains into Albemarle, to the University of Virginia. Up on Massanutton the signal officer's hand shook. He lowered his glass and cleared his throat: "War's a short word to say all it says—"

Fremont rested at Harrisonburg after yesterday's repulse. On the other side of Massanutton was Shields, moving south from Luray under the remarkable impression that Jackson was at Rude's Hill and Fremont effectively dealing with the "demoralized rebels." On the sixth he began to concentrate his troops near where had been Columbia Bridge. On the seventh he issued instructions to his advance guard.

"The enemy passed New Market on the 5th. Benker's Division in pursuit. The enemy has flung away everything, and their stragglers fill the mountains. They need only a movement on the flank to panic-strike them, and break them into fragments. No man has had such a chance since the war commenced. You are within thirty miles of a broken, retreating enemy, who still hangs together. Ten thousand Germans are on his rear, who hang on like bull dogs. You have only to throw yourself down on Waynesborough before him, and your cavalry will capture thousands, seize his train and abundant supplies."

In chase of this so beautiful a chance Shields set forth down the eastern side of Massanutton, with intent to round the mountain at Port Republic, turn north again, and somewhere on the Valley pike make that will-o'-the-wisp junction with Fremont and stamp out rebellion. But of late it had rained much, and the roads were muddy and the streams swollen. His army was split into sections; here a brigade and there a brigade, the advance south of Conrad's Store, the rear yet at Luray. He had, however, the advantage of moving through leagues of forest, heavy, shaggy, dense. It was not easy to observe the details of his operations.

Sunday morning dawned. A pearly mist wrapped the North Fork and the South Fork of the Shenandoah, and clung to the shingle roofs and bowery trees of the village between. The South Fork was shallow and could be forded. The North Fork was deep and strong and crossed by a covered bridge. Toward the bridge now, winding down from the near-by height on which the brigade had camped, came a detail from the 65th—twenty men led by Sergeant Mathew Coffin. They were chiefly Company A men, and they were going to relieve the pickets along the South Fork. Thanks to Mr. Commissary Banks, they had breakfasted well. The men were happy, not hilariously so, but in a placid, equable fashion. As they came down, over the wet grass, from the bluff, they talked. "Mist over the Shenandoah's just like mist over the James"—"No, 'tisn't! Nothing's like mist over the James."—"Well, the bridge's like the bridge at home, anyway!"—"'Tisn't much like it. Hasn't got sidewalks inside."—"Yes, it has!"—"No, it hasn't!"—"I know better, I've been through it."—"I've been through it twice't—was through it after Elk Run, a month ago!"—"Well, it hasn't got sidewalks, anyway,"—"I tell you it has."—"You 're mistaken!"—"I'm not."—"You never did see straight nohow!"—"If I was at home I'd thrash you!"

Mathew Coffin turned his head. "Who's that jowering back there? Stop it! Sunday morning and all!"

He went on, holding his head straight, a trig, slender figure, breathing irritation. His oval face with its little black moustache was set as hard as its boyish curves permitted, and his handsome dark eyes had two parallel lines above them. He marched as he marched always nowadays, with a mien aggrieved and haughty. He never lost the consciousness that he was wearing chevrons who had worn bars, and he was quite convinced that the men continually compared his two states.

The progress down hill to the bridge was short. Before the party the long, tunnel-like, weather-beaten structure loomed through the mist. The men entered and found it dusk and warm, smelling of horses, the river, fifteen feet below, showing through the cracks between the heavy logs of the floor. The marching feet sounded hollowly, voices reverberated. "Just like our bridge—told you 'twas—Ain't it like, Billy Maydew?"

"It air," said Billy. "I air certainly glad that we air a-crossing on a bridge. The Shenandoah air a prop-o-si-tion to swim."

"How did you feel, Billy, when you got away?"

"At first, just like school was out," said Billy. "But when a whole picket post started after me, 'n' I run fer it, 'n' the trees put out arms to stop me, 'n' the dewberry, crawling on the ground, said to itself, 'Hello! Let's make a trap'; 'n' when the rail fences all hollered out, 'We're goin' to turn agin you!' 'n' when a bit of swamp hollered louder than any, 'Let's suck down Billy Maydew—suck down Billy Maydew!' 'n' when a lot o' bamboo vines running over cedars, up with 'Hold him fast until you hear a bullet whizzing!' 'n' I got to the Shenandoah and there wa'n't no bridge, 'n' the Shenandoah says 'I'd just as soon drown men as look at them!'—when all them things talked so, I knew just how the critturs feel in the woods; 'n' I ain't so crazy about hunting as I was—and I say again this here air a most con-ve-ni-ent bridge."

With his musket butt he struck the boarded side. The noise was so resoundingly greater than he had expected that he laughed and the men with him. Now Sergeant Mathew Coffin was as nervous as a witch. He had been marching along with his thoughts moodily hovering over the battery he would take almost single-handed, or the ambush he would dislodge and so procure promotion indeed. At the noise of the stick he started violently. "Who did that? Oh, I see, and I might have known it! I'll report you for extra duty—"

"Report ahead," said Billy, under his breath.

Coffin halted. "What was that you said, Maydew?"

"I didn't speak to you—sir."

"Well, you'll speak to me now. What was it you said then?" He came nearer, his arm thrown up, though but in an angry gesture. "If I struck you," thought Billy, "I'd be sorry for it, so I won't do it. But one thing's sure—I certainly should like to!"

"If you don't answer me," said Coffin thickly, "I'll report you for disobedience as well as for disorderly conduct! What was it you said then?"

"I said, 'Report ahead—and be damned to you!'"

Coffin's lips shut hard. "Very good! We'll see how three days of guardhouse tastes to you!—Forward!"

The party cleared the bridge and almost immediately found itself in the straggling village street. The mist clung here as elsewhere, houses and trees dim shapes, the surrounding hills and the dense woods beyond the South Fork hardly seen at all. Coffin marched with flushed face and his brows drawn together. He was mentally writing a letter on pale blue paper, and in it he was enlarging upon ingratitude. The men sympathized with Billy and their feet sounded resentfully upon the stones. Billy alone marched with elaborate lightness, quite as though he were walking on air and loved the very thought of the guardhouse.

Headquarters was an old corner house that had flung open its doors to General Jackson with an almost tremulous eagerness. A flag waved before the door, and there was a knot beneath of couriers and orderlies, with staff officers coming and going. Opposite was a store, closed of course upon Sunday, but boasting a deep porch with benches, to say nothing of convenient kegs and boxes. Here the village youth and age alike found business to detain them. The grey-headed exchanged remarks. "Sleep? No, I couldn't sleep! Might as well see what's to be seen! I ain't got long to see anything, and so I told Susan. When's he coming out?—Once't when I was a little shaver like Bob, sitting on the scales there, I went with my father in the stage-coach to Fredericksburg, I remember just as well—and I was sitting before the tavern on a man's knee,—old man 'twas, for he said he had fought the Indians,—and somebody came riding down the street, with two or three others. I jus' remember a blue coat and a cocked hat and that his hair was powdered—and the man put me down and got up, and everybody else before the tavern got up—and somebody holloaed out 'Hurrah for General Washington—'"

There was a stir about the opposite door. An aide came out, mounted and rode off toward the bridge. An orderly brought a horse from the neighbouring stable. "That's his! That's General Jackson's!—Don't look like the war horse in Job, does he now?—Looks like a doctor's horse—Little Sorrel's his name." The small boy surged forward. "He's coming out!"—"How do you know him?"—"G' way! You always know generals when you see them! Great, big men, all trimmed up with gold. Besides, I saw him last night."—"You didn't!"—"Yes, I did! Saw his shadow on the curtain."—"How did you know 'twas his?"—"My mother said, 'Look, John, and don't never forget. That's Stonewall Jackson.' And it was a big shadow walking up and down, and it raised its hand—"

The church bell rang. A chaplain came out of the house. He had a Bible in his hand, and he beamed on all around. "There's the first bell, gentlemen—the bell, children! Church in a church, just like before we went to fighting! Trust you'll all come, gentlemen, and you, too, boys! The general hopes you'll all come."

Within headquarters, in a large bare room, Jackson was having his customary morning half-hour with his heads of departments—an invariably recurring period in his quiet and ordered existence. It was omitted only when he fought in the morning. He sat as usual, bolt upright, large feet squarely planted, large hands stiff at sides. On the table before him were his sabre and Bible. Before him stood a group of officers. The adjutant, Colonel Paxton, finished his report. The general nodded. "Good! good! Well, Major Harman?"

The chief quartermaster saluted. "The trains, sir, had a good night. There are clover fields on either side of the Staunton road and the horses are eating their fill. A few have sore hoof and may have to be left behind. I had the ordnance moved as you ordered, nearer the river. An orderly came back last night from the convoy on the way to Staunton. Sick and wounded standing it well. Prisoners slow marchers, but marching. I sent this morning a string of wagons to Cross Keys, to General Ewell. We had a stampede last night among the negro teamsters. They were sitting in a ring around the fire, and an owl hooted or a bat flitted. They had been telling stories of ha'nts, and they swore they saw General Ashby galloping by on the white stallion."

"Poor, simple, ignorant creatures!" said Jackson. "There is no witch of Endor can raise that horse and rider!—Major Hawks!"

The chief commissary came forward. "General Banks's stores are holding out well, sir. We are issuing special rations to the men to-day—Sunday dinner—fresh beef, rice and beans, canned fruits, coffee, sugar—"

"Good! good! They deserve the best.—Colonel Crutchfield—"

"I have posted Wooding's battery as you ordered, sir, on the brow of the hill commanding the bridge. There's a gun of Courtney's disabled. I have thought he might have the Parrott we captured day before yesterday. Ammunition has been issued as ordered. Caissons all filled."

"Good!—Captain Boswell—Ah, Mr. Hotchkiss."

"Captain Boswell is examining the South Fork, sir, with a view to finding the best place for the foot bridge you ordered constructed. I have here the map you ordered me to draw."

"Good! Put it here on the table.—Now, Doctor McGuire."

"Very few reported sick this morning, sir. The good women of the village are caring for those. Three cases of fever, two of pneumonia, some dysentery, measles among the recruits. The medicines we got at Winchester are invaluable; they and the better fare the men are getting. Best of all is the consciousness of victory,—the confidence and exaltation that all feel."

"Yes, doctor. God's shield is over us.—Captain Wilbourne—"

"I brought the signal party in from Peaked Mountain last night, sir. A Yankee cavalry company threatened to cut us off. Had we stayed we should have been captured. I trust, sir, that I acted rightly?"

"You acted rightly. You saw nothing of General Shields?"

"Nothing, sir. It is true that the woods for miles are extremely thick. It would perhaps be possible for a small force to move unseen. But we made out nothing."

Jackson rose and drew closer the sabre and the Bible. "That is all, gentlemen. After religious services you will return to your respective duties."

The sun was now above the mountain tops, the mist beginning to lift. It lay heavily, however, over the deep woods and the bottom lands of the South Fork, through which ran the Luray road, and on the South Fork itself.—Clatter, clatter! Shots and cries! Shouting the alarm as they came, splashing through the ford, stopping on the hither bank for one scattering volley back into the woolly veil, came Confederate infantry pickets and vedettes. "Yankee cavalry! Look out! Look out! Yankees!" In the mist the foremost man ran against the detail from the 65th. Coffin seized him. "Where? where?" The other gasped. "Coming! Drove us in! Whole lot of them! Got two guns. All of Shields, I reckon, right behind!" He broke away, tearing with his fellows into the village.

Sergeant Coffin and his men stared into the mist. They heard a great splashing, a jingling and shouting, and in another instant were aware of something looming like a herd of elephants. From the village behind them burst the braying of their own bugles—headquarters summoning, baggage train on the Staunton road summoning. The sound was shrill, insistent. The shapes in the mist grew larger. There came a flash of rifles, pale yellow through the drift as of lawn. Zzzzzz! Zzzzzz! sang the balls. The twenty men of the 65th proceeded to save themselves. Some of them tore down a side street, straight before the looming onrush. Others leaped fences and brushed through gardens, rich and dank. Others found house doors suddenly and quietly opening before them, houses with capacious dark garrets and cellars. All the dim horde, more and more of it, came splashing through the ford. A brazen rumbling arose, announcing guns. The foremost of the horde, blurred of outline, preternaturally large, huzzaing and firing, charged into the streets of Port Republic.

In a twinkling the village passed from her Sunday atmosphere to one of a highly work-a-day Monday. The blue cavalry began to harry the place. The townspeople hurried home, trumpets blared, shots rang out, oaths, shouts of warning! Men in grey belonging with the wagon train ran headlong toward their posts, others made for headquarters where the flag was and Stonewall Jackson. A number, headed off, were captured at once. Others, indoors when the alarm arose, were hidden by the women. Three staff officers had walked, after leaving Jackson's council, toward a house holding pretty daughters whom they meant to take to church. When the clangour broke out they had their first stupefied moment, after which they turned and ran with all their might toward headquarters. There was fighting up and down the street. Half a dozen huzzaing and sabring troopers saw the three and shouted to others nearer yet. "Officers! Cut them off, you there!" The three were taken. A captain, astride of a great reeking horse, towered above them. "Staff? You're staff? Is Jackson in the town?—and where? Quick now! Eh—what!"

"That's a lovely horse. Looks exactly, I imagine, like Rozinante—"

"On the whole I should say that McClellan might be finding Richmond like those mirages travellers tell about. The nearer he gets to it the further it is away."

"It has occurred to me that if after the evacuation of Corinth Beauregard should come back to Virginia—"

The captain in blue, hot and breathless, bewildered by the very success of the dash into town, kept saying, "Where is Jackson? What? Quick there, you! Where—" Behind him a corporal spoke out cavalierly. "They aren't going to tell you, sir. There's a large house down there that's got something like a flag before it—I think, too, that we ought to go take the bridge."

The streams of blue troopers flowed toward the principal street and united there. Some one saw the flag more plainly. "That's a headquarters!—What if Jackson were there? Good Lord! what if we took Jackson?" A bugler blew a vehement rally. "All of you, come on! All of you, come on!" The stream increased in volume, began to move, a compact body, down the street. "There are horses before that door! Look at that nag! That's Jackson's horse!—No."—"Yes! Saw it at Kernstown! Forward!"

Stonewall Jackson came out of the house with the flag before it. Behind him were those of his staff who had not left headquarters when the invasion occurred, while, holding the horses before the door, waited, white-lipped, a knot of most anxious orderlies. One brought Little Sorrel. Jackson mounted with his usual slow deliberation, then, turning in the saddle, looked back to the shouting blue horsemen. They saw him and dug spurs into flanks. First he pulled the forage cap over his eyes and then he jerked his hand into the air. These gestures executed he touched Little Sorrel with the rowel and, his suite behind him, started off down the street toward the bridge over the Shenandoah. One would not have said that he went like a swift arrow. There was, indeed, an effect of slowness, of a man traversing, in deep thought, a solitary plain. But for all that, he went so fast that the space between him and the enemy did not decrease. They came thunderingly on, a whole Federal charge—but he kept ahead. Seeing that he did so, they began to discharge carbine and pistol, some aiming at Little Sorrel, some at the grey figure riding stiffly, bolt upright and elbows out. Little Sorrel shook his head, snorted, and went on. Ahead loomed the bridge, a dusky, warm, gold-shot tunnel below an arch of weather-beaten wood. Under it rolled with a heavy sound the Shenandoah. Across the river, upon the green hilltops, had arisen a commotion. All the drums were beating the long roll. Stonewall Jackson and Little Sorrel came on the trodden rise of earth leading to the bridge mouth. The blue cavalry shouted and spurred. Their carbines cracked. The balls pockmarked the wooden arch. Jackson dragged the forage cap lower and disappeared within the bridge. The four or five with him turned and drew across the gaping mouth.

The blue cavalry came on, firing as they came. Staff and orderlies, the grey answered with pistols. Behind, in the bridge, sounded the hollow thunder of Little Sorrel's hoofs. The sound grew fainter. Horse and rider were nearly across. Staff and orderlies fired once again, then, just as the blue were upon them, turned, dug spur, shouted, and disappeared beneath the arch.

The Federal cavalry, massed before the bridge and in the field to either side, swore and swore, "He's out!—Jackson's out! There he goes—up the road! Fire!—Damn it all, what's the use? He's charmed. We almost got him! Good Lord! We'd all have been major-generals!"

A patrol galloped up. "They've got a great wagon train, sir, at the other end of the village—ordnance reserve, supply, everything! It is in motion. It's trying to get off by the Staunton road."

The cavalry divided. A strong body stayed by the bridge, while one as large turned and galloped away. Those staying chafed with impatience. "Why don't the infantry come up—damned creeping snails!"—"Yes, we could cross, but when we got to the other side, what then?—No, don't dare to burn the bridge—don't know what the general would say."—"Listen to those drums over there! If Stonewall Jackson brings all those hornets down on us!"—"If we had a gun—Speak of the angels!—Unlimber right here, lieutenant!—Got plenty of canister? Now if the damned infantry would only come on! Thought it was just behind us when we crossed the ford—What's that off there?"

"That" was a sharp sputter of musketry. "Firing! Who are they firing at? There aren't any rebels—we took them all prisoners—"

"There's fighting, anyway—wagon escort, maybe. The devil! Look across the river! Look! All the hornets are coming down—"

Of the detail from the 65th Coffin and two others stood their ground until the foremost of the herd was crossing the ford near at hand, large, threatening, trumpeting. Then the three ran like hares, hearts pounding at their sides, the ocean roaring in their ears, and in every cell in their bodies an accurate impression that they had been seen, and that the trumpeting herd meant to run down, kill or capture every grey soldier in Port Republic! Underfoot was wet knot grass, difficult and slippery; around was the shrouding mist. They thought the lane ran through to another street, but it proved a cul-de-sac. Something rose mistily before them; it turned out to be a cowshed. They flung themselves against the door, but the door was padlocked. Behind the shed, between it and a stout board fence, sprang a great clump of wet elder, tall and rank, with spreading leaves; underneath, black, miry earth. Into this they crowded, squatted on the earth, turned face toward the passage up which they had come, and brought their rifles to the front. A hundred yards away the main herd went by, gigantic in the mist. The three in the elder breathed deep. "All gone. Gone!—No. There's a squad coming up here."

The three kneeling in the mire, watching through triangular spaces between the branchy leaves, grew suddenly, amazingly calm. What was the sense in being frightened? You couldn't get away. Was there anywhere to go to one might feel agitation enough, but there wasn't! Coffin handled his rifle with the deliberation of a woman smoothing her long hair. The man next him—Jim Watts—even while he settled forward on his knees and raised his musket, turned his head aside and spat. "Derned old fog always gits in my throat!" A branch of elder was cutting Billy Maydew's line of vision. He broke it off with noiseless care and raised to his shoulder the Enfield rifle which he had acquired at Winchester. There loomed, at thirty feet away, colossal beasts bestridden by giants.

Suddenly the mist thinned, lifted. The demon steeds and riders resolved themselves into six formidable looking Federal troopers. From the main street rang the Federal bugles, vehemently rallying, imperative. Shouting, too, broke out, savage, triumphant, pointed with pistol shots. The bugle called again, Rally to the colours! Rally!

"I calculate," said one of the six blue horsemen, "that the boys have found Stonewall."

"Then they'll need us all!" swore the trooper leading. "If anybody's in the cow-house they can wait."—Right about face! Forward! Trot!

The men within the elder settled down on the wet black earth. "Might as well stay here, I suppose," said Coffin. Jim Watts began to shiver. "It's awful damp and cold. I've got an awful pain in the pit of my stomach." He rolled over and lay groaning. "Can't I go, sir?" asked Billy. "I kind of feel more natural in the open."

Now Mathew Coffin had just been thinking that while this elder bush springing from muddy earth, with a manure heap near, was damned uncomfortable, it was better than being outside while those devils were slashing and shooting. Perhaps they would ride away, or the army might come over the bridge, and there would be final salvation. He had even added a line to the letter he was writing, "An elder bush afforded me some slight cover from which to fire—" And now Billy Maydew wanted to go outside and be taken prisoner! Immediately he became angry again. "You're no fonder of the open than I am!" he said, and his upper lip twitched one side away from his white teeth.

Billy, his legs already out of the bush, looked at him with large, calm grey eyes. "Kin I go?"

"Go where? You'll get killed."

"You wouldn't grieve if I did, would you? I kinder thought I might get by a back street to the wagons. A cousin of mine's a wagon master and he ain't going ter give up easy. I kinder thought I might help—"

"I'm just waiting," said Coffin, "until Jim here gets over his spasm. Then I'll give the word."

Jim groaned. "I feel sicker'n a yaller dog after a fight—'n' you know I didn't mind 'em at all when they were really here! You two go on, 'n' I'll come after awhile."

Coffin and Billy found the back street. It lay clear, warm, sunny, empty. "They're all down at the bridge," said Billy. "Bang! bang! bang!" They came to a house, blinds all closed, shrinking behind its trees. Houses, like everything else, had personality in this war. A town occupied changed its mien according to the colour of the uniform in possession. As the two hurrying grey figures approached, a woman, starting from the window beside which she had been kneeling, watching through a crevice, ran out of the house and through the yard to the gate. "You two men, come right in here! Don't you know the Yankees are in town?"

She was young and pretty. Coffin swept off his cap. "That's the reason we're trying to get to the edge of town—to help the men with the wagon train."

Her eyes grew luminous. "How brave you are! Go, and God bless you!"

The two ran on. Mathew Coffin added another line to his letter: "A lady besought me to enter her house, saying that I would surely be killed, and that she could conceal me until the enemy was gone. But I—"

They were nearly out of town—they could see the long train hurriedly moving on the Staunton road. There was a sudden burst of musketry. A voice reached them from the street below. "Halt, you two Confeds running there! Come on over here! Rally to the colours!" There was a flash of the stars and bars, waved vigorously. "Oh, ha, ha!" cried Billy, "thar was some of us wasn't taken! Aren't you glad we didn't stay behind the cowshed?"

It came into Coffin's head that Billy might tell that his sergeant had wished to stay behind the cowshed. The blood rushed to his face; he saw the difficulty of impressing men who knew about the cowshed with his abilities in the way of storming batteries single-handed. He had really a very considerable share of physical courage, and naturally he esteemed it something larger than it was. He began to burn with the injustice of Billy Maydew's thinking him backward in daring and so reporting him around camp-fires. As he ran he grew angrier and angrier, and not far from the shaken flag, in a little grassy hollow which hid them from view, he called upon the other to halt. Billy's sense of discipline brought him to a stop, but did not keep him from saying, "What for?" They were only two soldiers, out of the presence of others and in a pretty tight place together—Mathew Coffin but three years older than he, and no great shakes anyhow. "What for?" asked Billy.

"I just want to say to you," said Coffin thickly, "that as to that shed, it was my duty to protect my men; just as it is my duty as an officer to report you for disobedience and bad language addressed to an officer—"

Billy's brow clouded. "I had forgotten all about that. I was going along very nicely with you. You were really behaving yourself—like a—like a gentleman. The cow-house was all right. You are brave enough when it comes to fighting. And now you're bringing it all up again—"

"'Gentleman.'—Who are you to judge of a gentleman?"

Billy looked at him calmly. "I air one of them.—I air a-judging from that-a stand."

"You are going to the guardhouse for disobedience and bad language and impertinence."

"It would be right hard," said Billy, "if I had to leave su-pe-ri-or-i-ty outside with my musket. But I don't."

Coffin, red in the face, made at him. The Thunder Run man, supple as a moccasin, swerved aside. "Air you finished speaking, sergeant? Fer if you have, 'n' if you don't mind, I think I'll run along—I air only fighting Yankees this mornin'!"

An aide of Jackson's, cut off from headquarters and taking shelter in the upper part of the town, crept presently out of hiding, and finding the invaders' eyes turned toward the bridge, proceeded with dispatch and quietness to gather others from dark havens. When he had a score or more he proceeded to bolder operations. In the field and on the Staunton road all was commotion; wagons with their teams moving in double column up the road, negro teamsters clamouring with ashen looks, "Dose damn Yanks! Knowed we didn't see dat ghos' fer nothin' las' night!" Wagon masters shouted, guards and sentries looked townward with anxious eyes. The aide got a flag from the quartermaster's tent; found moreover a very few artillery reserves and an old cranky howitzer. With all of these he returned to the head of the main street, and about the moment the cavalry at the bridge divided, succeeded in getting his forces admirably placed in a strong defensive position: Coffin and Billy Maydew joined just as an outpost brought a statement that about two hundred Yankee cavalry were coming up the street.

The two guns, Federal Parrott, Confederate howitzer, belching smoke, made in twenty minutes the head of the street all murk. In the first charge Coffin received a sabre cut over the head. The blood blinded him at first, and when he had wiped it away, and tied a beautiful new handkerchief from a Broadway shop about the wound, he found it still affected sight and hearing. He understood that their first musketry fire had driven the cavalry back, indeed he saw two or three riderless horses galloping away. He understood also that the Yankees had brought up a gun, and that the captain was answering with the superannuated howitzer. He was sure, too, that he himself was firing his musket with great precision. Fire!—load, fire!—load, fire! One, two,—one, two! but his head, he was equally sure, was growing larger. It was now larger than the globe pictured on the first page of the geography he had studied at school. It was the globe, and he was Atlas holding it. Fire—load, fire—load! Now the head was everything, and all life was within it. There was a handsome young man named Coffin, very brave, but misunderstood by all save one. He was brave and handsome. He could take a tower by himself—Fire, load—Fire, load—One, two. The enemy knew his fame. They said, "Coffin! Which is Coffin?"—Fire, load, one, two. The grey armies knew this young hero. They cheered when he went by. They cheered—they cheered—when he went by to take the tower. They wrote home and lovely women envied the loveliest woman. "Coffin! Coffin! Coffin's going to take the tower! Watch him! Yaaaaih! Yaaaih!"—He struck the tower and looked to see it go down. Instead, with a roar, it sprang, triple brass, height on height to the skies. The stars fell, and suddenly, in the darkness, an ocean appeared and went over him. He lay beneath the overturned Federal gun, and the grey rush that had silenced the gunners and taken the piece went on.

For a long time he lay in a night without a star, then day began to break. It broke curiously, palely light for an instant, then obscured by thick clouds, then faint light again. Some part of his brain began to think. His head was not now the world; the world was lying on his shoulder and arm, crushing it. With one piece of his brain he began to appeal to people; with another piece to answer the first. "Mother, take this thing away! Mother, take this thing away! She's dead. She can't, however much she wants to. Father! He's dead, too. Rob, Carter—Jack! Grown up and moved away. Judge Allen, sir!—Mr. Boyd!—would you just give a hand? Here I am, under Purgatory Mountain. Darling—take this thing away! Darling—Darling! Men!—Colonel Cleave!—Boys—boys—" All the brain began to think. "O God, send somebody!"

When Purgatory Mountain was lifted from his shoulder and arm he fainted. Water, brought in a cap from a neighbouring puddle and dashed in his face, brought him to. "Thar now!" said Billy, "I certainly air glad to see that you air alive!" Coffin groaned. "It must ha' hurt awful! S'pose you let me look before I move you?" He took out a knife and gently slit the coat away. "Sho! I know that hurts! But you got first to the gun! You ran like you was possessed, and you yelled, and you was the first to touch the gun. Thar now! I air a-tying the han'kerchief from your head around your arm, 'cause there's more blood—"

"They'll have to cut it off," moaned Coffin.

"No, they won't. Don't you let 'em! Now I air a-going to lift you and carry you to the nearest house. All the boys have run on after the Yanks."

He took up his sergeant and moved off with an easy step. Coffin uttered a short and piteous moaning like a child. They presently met a number of grey soldiers. "We've druv them—we've druv them! The 37th's down there. Just listen to Rockbridge!—Who've you got there?"

"Sergeant Coffin," said Billy. "He air right badly hurt! He was the first man at the gun. He fired, an' then he got hold of the sponge staff and laid about him—he was that gallant. The men ought to 'lect him back. He sure did well."

The nearest house flung open its doors. "Bring him right in here—oh, poor soldier! Right here in the best room!—Run, Maria, and turn down the bed. Oh, poor boy! He looks like my Robert down at Richmond! This way—get a little blackberry wine, Betty, and the scissors and my roll of lint—"

Billy laid him on the bed in the best room. "Thar now! You air all right. The doctor'll come just as soon as I can find him, 'n' then I'll get back to the boys—Wait—I didn't hear, I'll put my ear down. You couldn't lose all that blood and not be awful weak—"

"I'd be ashamed to report now!" whispered Coffin. "Maybe I was wrong—"

"Sho!" said Billy. "We're all wrong more or less. Here, darn you, drink your wine, and stop bothering!"

Across the Shenandoah Stonewall Jackson and the 37th Virginia came down from the heights with the impetuosity of a torrent. Behind them poured other grey troops. On the cliff heads Poague and Carpenter came into position and began with grape and canister. The blue Parrott, full before the bridge mouth, menacing the lane within, answered with a shriek of shells. The 37th and Jackson left the road, plunged down the ragged slope of grass and vines, and came obliquely toward the dark tunnel. Jackson and Little Sorrel had slipped into their battle aspect. You would have said that every auburn hair of the general's head and beard was a vital thing. His eyes glowed as though there were lamps behind, and his voice rose like a trumpet of promise and doom. "Halt!—Aim at the gunners!—Fire! Fix bayonets! Charge!"

The 37th rushed in column through the bridge. The blue cavalry fired one volley. The unwounded among the blue artillerymen strove to plant a shell within the dusky lane. But most of the gunners were down, or the fuse was wrong. The grey torrent leaped out of the tunnel and upon the gun. They took it and turned it against the horsemen. The blue cavalry fled. On the bluff heads above the river three grey batteries came into action. The 37th Virginia began to sweep the streets of Port Republic.

The blue cavalry, leaving the guns, leaving prisoners they had taken and their wounded, turned alike from the upper end of the village and rode, pell-mell, for the South Fork. One and all they splashed through, not now in covering mist, but in hot sunshine, the 37th volleying at their heels and from the bluffs above the Shenandoah, Poague and Carpenter and Wooding strewing their path with grape and canister.

A mile or two in the deep woods they met Shields's infantry advance. There followed a movement toward the town—futile enough, for as the vanguard approached, the Confederate batteries across the river limbered up, trotted or galloped to other positions on the green bluff heads, and trained the guns on the ground between Port Republic and the head of the Federal column. Winder's brigade came also and took position on the heights commanding Lewiston, and Taliaferro's swung across the bridge and formed upon the townward side of South Fork. Shields halted. All day he halted, listening to the guns at Cross Keys.

Sitting Little Sorrel at the northern end of the bridge, Stonewall Jackson watched Taliaferro's men break step and cross. A staff officer ventured to inquire what the general thought General Shields would do.

"I think, sir, that he will stay where he is."

"All day, sir?"

"All day."

"He has ten thousand men. Will he not try to attack?"

"No, sir! No! He cannot do it. I should tear him to pieces."

A heavy sound came into being. The staff officer swung round on his horse. "Listen, sir!"

"Yes. Artillery firing to the northwest. Fremont will act without Shields."

A courier came at a gallop. "General Ewell's compliments, sir, and the battle of Cross Keys is beginning."

"Good! good! My compliments to General Ewell, and I expect him to win it."



CHAPTER XXVII

JUDITH AND STAFFORD

The cortege bearing Ashby to his grave wound up and up to the pass in the Blue Ridge. At the top it halted. The ambulance rested beside a grey boulder, while the cavalry escort dismounted and let the horses crop the sweet mountain grass. Below them, to the east, rolled Piedmont Virginia; below them to the west lay the great Valley whence they had come. As they rested they heard the cannon of Cross Keys, and with a glass made out the battle smoke.

For an hour they gazed and listened, anxious and eager; then the horsemen remounted, the ambulance moved from the boulder, and all went slowly down the long loops of road. Down and down they wound, from the cool, blowing air of the heights into the warm June region of red roads, shady trees and clear streams, tall wheat and ripening cherries, old houses and gardens. They were moving toward the Virginia Central, toward Meechum's Station.

A courier had ridden far in advance. At Meechum's was a little crowd of country people. "They're coming! That's an ambulance!—Is he in the ambulance? Everybody take off their hats. Is that his horse behind? Yes, it is a horse that he sometimes rode, but the three stallions were killed. How mournful they come! Albert Sidney Johnston is dead, and Old Joe may die, he is so badly hurt—and Bee is dead, and Ashby is dead." Three women got out of an old carryall. "One of you men come help us lift the flowers! We were up at dawn and gathered all there were—"

The train from Staunton came in—box cars and a passenger coach. The coffin, made at Port Republic, was lifted from the ambulance, out of a bed of fading flowers. It was wrapped in the battle-flag. The crowd bowed its head. An old minister lifted trembling hand. "God—this Thy servant! God—this Thy servant!" The three women brought their lilies, their great sprays of citron aloes. The coffin was placed in the aisle of the passenger coach, and four officers followed as its guard. The escort was slight. Never were there many men spared for these duties. The dead would have been the first to speak against it. Every man in life was needed at the front. The dozen troopers stalled their horses in two of the box cars and themselves took possession of a third. The bell rang, slowly and tollingly. The train moved toward Charlottesville, and the little crowd of country folk was left in the June sunshine with the empty ambulance. In the gold afternoon, the bell slowly ringing, the train crept into Charlottesville.

In this town, convenient for hospitals and stores, midway between Richmond and the Valley, a halting place for troops moving east and west, there were soldiers enough for a soldier's escort to his resting place. The concourse at the station was large, and a long train followed the bier of the dead general out through the town to the University of Virginia, and the graveyard beyond.

There were no students now at the University. In the white-pillared rotunda surgeons held council and divided supplies. In the ranges, where were the cell-like students' rooms, and in the white-pillared professors' houses, lay the sick and wounded. From room to room, between the pillars, moved the nursing women. To-day the rotunda was cleared. Surgeons and nurses snatched one half-hour, and, with the families from the professors' houses, and the men about the place and the servants, gathered upon the rotunda steps, or upon the surrounding grassy slopes, to watch the return of an old student. It was not long before they heard the Dead March.

For an hour the body lay between the white columns before the rotunda that Jefferson had built. Soldiers and civilians, women and children, passing before the bier, looked upon the marble face and the hand that clasped the sword. Then, toward sunset, the coffin lid was closed, the bearers took the coffin up, the Dead March began again, and all moved toward the graveyard.

Dusk gathered, soft and warm, and filled with fireflies. The Greenwood carriage, with the three sisters and Miss Lucy, drew slowly through the scented air up to the dim old house. Julius opened the door. The ladies stepped out, and in silence went up the steps. Molly had been crying. The little handkerchief which she dropped, and which was restored to her by Julius, was quite wet.

Julius, closing the carriage door, looked after the climbing figures: "Fo' de Lawd, you useter could hear dem laughin' befo' dey got to de big oaks, and when dey outer de kerriage an' went up de steps dey was chatterin' lak de birds at daybreak! An' now I heah dem sighin' an' Miss Molly's handkerchief ez wet ez ef 't was in de washtub! De ol' times is evaporated."

"Dat sholy so," agreed Isham, from the box. "Des look at me er-drivin' horses dat once I'd er scorned to tech!—An' all de worl' er-mournin'. Graveyards gitting full an' ginerals lyin' daid. What de use of dis heah war, anyhow? W'ite folk ought ter hab more sence."

In the Greenwood dining-room they sat at table in silence, scarcely touching Car'line's supper, but in the parlour afterward Judith turned at bay. "Even Aunt Lucy—of all people in the world! Aunt Lucy, if you do not smile this instant, I hope all the Greenwood shepherdesses will step from out the roses and disown you! And Unity, if you don't play, sing, look cheerful, my heart will break! Who calls it loss this afternoon? He left a thought of him that will guide men on! Who doubts that to-morrow morning we shall hear that Cross Keys was won? Oh, I know that you are thinking most of General Ashby!—but I am thinking most of Cross Keys!"

"Judith, Judith, you are the strongest of us all—"

"Judith, darling; nothing's going to hurt Richard! I just feel it—"

"Hush, Molly! Judith's not afraid."

"No. I am not afraid. I think the cannon have stopped at Cross Keys, and that they are resting on the field.—Now, for us women. I do not think that we do badly now. We serve all day and half the night, and we keep up the general heart. I think that if in any old romance we read of women like the women of the South in this war we would say, 'Those women were heroic.' We have been at war for a year and two months. I see no end of it. It is a desert, and no one knows how wide it is. We may travel for years. Beside every marching soldier, there marches invisible a woman soldier too. We are in the field as they are in the field, and doing our part. No—we have not done at all badly, but now let us give it all! There is a plane where every fibre is heroic. Let us draw to full height, lift eyes, and travel boldly! We have to cross the desert, but from the desert one sees all the stars! Let us be too wise for such another drooping hour!" She came and kissed her aunt, and clung to her. "I wasn't scolding, Aunt Lucy! How could I? But to-night I simply have to be strong. I have to look at the stars, for the desert is full of terrible shapes. Some one said that the battle with Shields may be fought to-morrow. I have to look at the stars." She lifted herself. "We finished 'Villette,' didn't we?—Oh, yes! I didn't like the ending. Well, let us begin 'Mansfield Park'—Molly, have you seen my knitting?"

Having with his fellows of the escort from Port Republic seen the earth heaped over the dead cavalry leader, Maury Stafford lay that night in Charlottesville at an old friend's house. He slept little; the friend heard him walking up and down in the night. By nine in the morning he was at the University. "Miss Cary? She'll be here in about half an hour. If you'll wait—"

"I'll wait," said Stafford. He sat down beneath an elm and, with his eyes upon the road by which must approach the Greenwood carriage, waited the half-hour. It passed; the carriage drew up and Judith stepped from it. Her eyes rested upon him with a quiet friendliness. He had been her suitor; but he was so no longer. Months ago he had his answer. All the agitation, the strong, controlling interest of his world must, perforce, have made him forget. She touched his hand. "I saw you yesterday afternoon. I did not know if you had ridden back—"

"No. I shall be kept here until to-morrow. Will you be Sister of Mercy all day?"

"I go home to-day about four o'clock."

"If I ride over at five may I see you?"

"Yes, if you wish. I must go now—I am late. Is it true that we won the battle yesterday? Tell me—"

"We do not know the details yet. It seems that only Ewell's division was engaged. Trimble's brigade suffered heavily, but it was largely an artillery battle. I saw a copy of General Jackson's characteristic telegram to Richmond. 'God gave us the victory to-day at Cross Keys.'—Fremont has drawn off to Harrisonburg. There is a rumour of a battle to-day with Shields."

He thought that afternoon, as he passed through the road gates and into the drive between the oaks, that he had never seen the Greenwood place look so fair. The sun was low and there were shadows, but where the light rays touched, all lay mellow and warm, golden and gay and sweet. On the porch he found Unity, sitting with her guitar, singing to a ragged grey youth, thin and pale, with big hollow eyes. She smiled and put out her hand. "Judith said you were coming. She will be down in a moment. Major Stafford—Captain Howard—Go on singing? Very well,—

"Soft o'er the fountain, lingering falls the southern moon—"

"Why is it that convalescent soldiers want the very most sentimental ditties that can be sung?

"Far o'er the mountain, breaks the day too soon!"

"I know that string is going to snap presently! Then where would I buy guitar strings in a land without a port?

"Nita! Juanita! Ask thy soul if we should part— Nita! Juanita! Lean thou on my heart!"

Judith came down in a soft old muslin, pale violet, open at the throat. It went well with that warm column, with the clear beauty of her face and her dark liquid eyes. She had a scarf in her hand; it chanced to be the long piece of black lace that Stafford remembered her wearing that April night.—"It is a lovely evening. Suppose we walk."

There was a path through the flower garden, down a slope of grass, across a streamlet in a meadow, then gently up through an ancient wood, and more steeply to the top of a green hill—a hill of hills from which to watch the sunset. Stafford unlatched the flower-garden gate. "The roses are blooming as though there were no war!" said Judith. "Look at George the Fourth and the Seven Sisters and my old Giant of Battle!"

"Sometimes you are like one flower," answered Stafford, "and sometimes like another. To-day, in that dress, you are like heliotrope."

Judith wondered. "Is it wise to go on—if he has forgotten so little as that?" She spoke aloud. "I have hardly been in the garden for days. Suppose we rest on the arbour steps and talk? There is so much I want to know about the Valley—"

Stafford looked pleadingly. "No, no! let us go the old path and see the sunset over Greenwood. Always when I ride from here I say to myself, 'I may never see this place again!'"

They walked on between the box. "The box has not been clipped this year. I do not know why, except that all things go unpruned. The garden itself may go back to wilderness."

"You have noticed that? It is always so in times like these. We leave the artificial. Things have a hardier growth—feeling breaks its banks—custom is not listened to—"

"It is not so bad as that!" said Judith, smiling. "And we will not really let the box grow out of all proportion!—Now tell me of the Valley."

They left the garden and dipped into the green meadow. Stafford talked of battles and marches, but he spoke in a monotone, distrait and careless, as of a day-dreaming scholar reciting his lesson. Such as it was, the recital lasted across the meadow, into the wood, yet lit by yellow light, a place itself for day dreams. "No. I did not see him fall. He was leading an infantry regiment. He was happy in his death, I think. One whom the gods loved.—Wait! your scarf has caught."

He loosed it from the branch. She lifted the lace, put it over her head, and held it with her slender hand beneath her chin. He looked at her, and his breath came sharply. A shaft of light, deeply gold, struck across the woodland path. He stood within it, on slightly rising ground that lifted him above her. The quality of the light gave him a singular aspect. He looked a visitant from another world, a worn spirit, of fine temper, but somewhat haggard, somewhat stained. Lines came into Judith's brow. She stepped more quickly, and they passed from out the wood to a bare hillside, grass and field flowers to the summit. The little path that zigzagged upward was not wide enough for two. He moved through the grass and flowers beside her, a little higher still, and between her and the sun. His figure was dark; no longer lighted as it was in the wood. Judith sighed inwardly. "I am so tired that I am fanciful. I should not have come." She talked on. "When we were children and read 'Pilgrim's Progress' Unity and I named this the Hill Difficulty. And we named the Blue Ridge the Delectable Mountains—War puts a stop to reading."

"Yes. The Hill Difficulty! On the other side was the Valley of Humiliation, was it not?"

"Yes: where Christian met Apollyon. We are nearly up, and the sunset will be beautiful."

At the top, around a solitary tree, had been built a bench. The two sat down. The sun was sinking behind the Blue Ridge. Above the mountains sailed a fleet of little clouds, in a sea of pale gold shut in by purple headlands. Here and there on the earth the yellow light lingered. Judith sat with her head thrown back against the bark of the tree, her eyes upon the long purple coast and the golden sea. Stafford, his sword drawn forward, rested his clasped hands upon the hilt and his cheek on his hands. "Are they not like the Delectable Mountains?" she said. "Almost you can see the shepherds and the flocks—hear the pilgrims singing. Look where that shaft of light is striking!"

"There is heliotrope all around me," he answered. "I see nothing, know nothing but that!"

"You do very wrongly," she said. "You pain me and you anger me!"

"Judith! Judith! I cannot help it. If the wildest tempest were blowing about this hilltop, a leaf upon this tree might strive and strive to cling to the bough, to remain with its larger self—yet would it be twisted off and carried whither the wind willed! My passion is that tempest and my soul is that leaf."

"It is more than a year since first I told you that I could not return your feeling. Last October—that day we rode to the old mill—I told you so again, and told you that if we were to remain friends it could only be on condition that you accepted the truth as truth and let the storm you speak of die! You promised—"

"Even pale friendship, Judith—I wanted that!"

"If you wish it still, all talk like this must cease. After October I thought it was quite over. All through the winter those gay, wonderful letters that you wrote kept us up at Greenwood—"

"I could hear from you only on those terms. I kept them until they, too, were of no use—"

"When I wrote to you last month—"

"I knew of your happiness—before you wrote. I learned it from one nearly concerned. I—I—" He put his hand to his throat as if he were choking, arose, and walked a few paces and came back. "It was over there near Gordonsville—under a sunset sky much like this. What did I do that night? I have a memory of all the hours of blackness that men have ever passed, lying under forest trees with their faces against the earth. You see me standing here, but I tell you my face is against the earth, at your feet—"

"It is madness!" said Judith. "You see not me, but a goddess of your own making. It is a chain of the imagination. Break it! True goddesses do not wish such love—at least, true women do not!"

"I cannot break it. It is too strong. Sometimes I wish to break it, sometimes not."

Judith rose. "Let us go. The sun is down."

She took the narrow path and he walked beside and above her as before. Darker crimson had come into the west, but the earth beneath had yet a glow and warmth. They took a path which led, not by way of the wood, but by the old Greenwood graveyard, the burying-place of the Carys. At the foot of the lone tree hill they came again side by side, and so mounted the next low rise of ground. "Forgive me," said Stafford. "I have angered you. I am very wretched. Forgive me."

They were beside the low graveyard wall. She turned, leaning against it. There were tears in her eyes. "You all come, and you go away, and the next day brings news that such and such an one is dead! With the sound of Death's wings always in the air, how can any one—I do not wish to be angry. If you choose we will talk like friends—like a man and a woman of the South. If you do not, I can but shut my ears and hasten home and henceforth be too wise to give you opportunity—"