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I'll try the pike," said Marchmont, from the doorstep. "Bah! it's turning cold! Had you noticed, father, what exceedingly thin ice you have around this house?" "By all the powers, my son!" answered Father Tierney. "The moonlight's desaving you! That isn't water--that's firm ground. Look out for the flagstaff at the gate, and presint my respects to the general. Sure,
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't was a fine donation for the orphans he donated!" It was two o'clock of a moonlight night when Captain Marchmont and his troopers took the road to Williamsport. They passed through the silent camp, gave the word to the last sentry, and emerged upon the quiet countryside. "Was a courier before them?" "Yes, sir--a man on a great bay
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horse. Said he had important dispatches." The moon-flooded road, hard beneath the hoofs of the horses, stretched south and west, unmarked by any moving creature. Marchmont rode in advance. His horse was strong and fresh; clear of the pickets, he put him to the gallop. An hour went by. Nothing but the cold, still moonshine, the sound of hoofs upon
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the metalled road, and now and then, in some wayside house, the stealthy lifting of a sash, as man or woman looked forth upon the riders. At a tollgate the aide drew rein, leaned from his saddle, and struck against the door with a pistol butt. A man opened a window. "Has a courier passed, going to Williamsport?" "Yes, sir.
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A man on a great bay horse. Three quarters of an hour ago." "Was he riding fast?" "Yes. Riding fast." Marchmont galloped on, his two troopers behind him. Their steeds were good, but not so good as was his. He left them some way behind. The night grew old. The moon, which had risen late, was high in the heavens.
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The Englishman traversed a shadowy wood, then went by silvered fields. A cabin door creaked; an old negro put out a cautious head. "Has a courier passed, going to Williamsport?" "Yaas, sah. Er big man on er big bay. 'Bout half er hour ergo, sah." Marchmont galloped on. He looked back over his shoulder--his men were a mile in the
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rear. "And when I come up with you, my friend, what then? On the whole I don't think I'll ask you to turn with me. We'll go on to Williamsport, and there we'll hold the court of inquiry." He touched his horse with the spur. The miles of road ran past, the air, eager and cold, pressed sharply; there came
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a feeling of the morning. He was now upon a level stretch of road, before him, a mile away, a long, bare hill. He crossed a bridge, hollowly sounding through the night, and neared the hill. His vision was a trained one, exercised by war in many lands. There was a dark object on the road before him; it grew
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in size, but it grew very slowly; it, too, was moving. "You've a tired horse, though, lieutenant!" said the aide. "Strain as you may, I'll catch you up!" His own horse devoured the ground, steadily galloping by the frosty fields, through the air of earliest dawn. Suddenly, before him, the courier from Kelly halted. Mounted against a faint light in
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the southwestern sky, he stood upon the hilltop and waited for the horseman from Frederick. The latter took at a gallop the remainder of the level road, but at the foot of the hill changed to a trot. Above him, the waiting horseman grew life-size. He waited, very quietly, Marchmont observed, sitting, turned in his saddle, against the sky of
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dawn. "Damned if I know if you're truly blue or grey!" thought the aide. "Did you stop to disarm suspicion, because you saw you'd be overtaken--" Another minute and the two were in speaking distance; another, and they were together on the hilltop. "Good-morning!" said McNeill. "What haste to Williamsport?" He bent forward in the light that was just strong
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enough to see by. "Why--It is yesterday's comrade! Good-morning, Captain Marchmont!" "We must have started," said Marchmont, "somewhere near the same hour. I have a communication from General Banks for the commander at Williamsport." If the other raised his brows over the aide's acting courier twice in twenty-four hours, the action did not appear in the yet uncertain light. Apparently
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McNeill took the statement easily, upon its face value. "In that case," he said with amicableness, "I shall have the pleasure of your company a little longer. We must be about six miles out, I should think." "About that distance," agreed the other. "And as at this unearthly hour I certainly cannot see the colonel, and as your horse is
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evidently spent, why go the rest of the way at a gallop?" "It was my idea," said McNeill, "to pass the river early. If I can gain the big woods before the day is old, so much the better. Dandy is tired, it is true, but he has a certain staying quality. However, we will go more slowly now." They
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put themselves in motion. "Two men are behind us," remarked the man from Romney. "Yes. There they come through the fields. Two troopers who are riding with me--Regulars. They'll accommodate their pace to ours." "Very good," said the other with serenity, and the two rode on, Marchmont's men a little way behind. By now the stars had faded, the moon
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looked wan, there was a faint rose in the east. Far in a vale to the left a cock crew, and was answered from across a stream. To the south, visible between and above the fringing trees, a ribbon of mist proclaimed the river. The two men rode, not in silence, but still not with yesterday's freedom of speech. There
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was, however, no quietude that the chill ebb of the hour and the weariness of overwork might not account for. They spoke of this and that briefly, but amicably. "Will you report at headquarters?" asked Marchmont, "before attempting the Virginia shore?" "I do not yet know. There is no occasion, as I have all instructions from General Banks. I wish
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to make no unnecessary delay." "Have you the countersign?" "Yes." "Will you cross by the ferry?" "I hardly think so. Ashby may be watching that and the ford below. There is a place farther up the river that I may try." "That is, after you pass through Williamsport?" "Yes, a mile or two beyond." The light increased. Gold clouds barred
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the east, the cocks crew, and crows came cawing from the woods to the vast, brown cornfields. The road now ran at no great distance from the canal and the river. First came the canal, mirroring between trodden banks the red east, then the towpath, a cornfield, a fringe of sycamore, oak, and willow, then the Potomac veiled with mist.
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They were drawing near to Williamsport. The day's travel had begun. They met or overtook workers upon the road, sutlers' carts, ordnance wagons, a squad of artillerymen conducting a gun, a country doctor in an old buggy, two boys driving calves yoked together. The road made a curve to the north, like a sickle. On the inland side it ran
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beneath a bluff; on the other a rail fence rimmed a twelve-foot embankment dropping to a streamlet and a wide field where the corn stood in shocks. Here, at a cross-roads debouching from the north into the pike, they encountered a company of infantry. Marchmont checked his horse. "I'm not sure, but I think I know the officer. Be so
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good as to await me a moment, lieutenant." He rode up to the captain in blue, and the two talked in low voices. The infantrymen broke lines a little, leaned on their rifles, and discussed arrangements for breakfast. Among them were a number of tall men, lean and sinewy, with a sweep of line and unconstraint of gesture that smacked
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of hunters' ways and mountain exercise. The two troopers from Frederick City came up. The place of the cross-roads showed animated and blue. The sun pushed its golden ball above the hilltops, and all the rifle barrels gleamed in the light. Marchmont and the new-met captain approached the courier from Kelly, sitting his horse in the middle of the road.
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"Lieutenant McNeill," said the aide with quietness, "there seemed, at Frederick, some irregularity in your papers. Doubtless everything can be explained, and your delay in reaching Romney will be slight. It is my duty to conduct you to Williamsport headquarters, and to report the matter to the colonel commanding. I regret the interruption--not a long continued one, I trust--to our
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pleasant relations." McNeill had made a movement of surprise, and his brows had come together. It was but for an instant, then he smiled, and smiled with his eyes. "If such are your orders, sir, neither you nor I can help the matter. To headquarters, of course--the sooner the better! I can have no possible objection." He touched his horse
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and advanced a little farther into the road. All the blue soldiers were about him. A sergeant-major, brought for the moment opposite him, uttered an exclamation. "You know this officer, Miller?" called the captain of infantry. Miller saluted. "No, sir. But I was in the ferry-boat when he crossed yesterday. We talked a little. 'You've got a Southern voice,' says
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I, and he says, 'Yes. I was born in the valley of the South Branch.' 'You'll find company here,' says I, 'for we've got some northwestern Virginians--'" "By jingo!" cried the captain, "that's true! There's a squad of them here." He raised his voice. "Men from northwest Virginia, advance!" A detachment swung forward, lean men and tall, stamped as hunters,
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eighteenth-century frontiersmen projected to the middle of the nineteenth. "Do any of you men know the South Branch of the Potomac?" Three voices made themselves heard. "Know it like a book."--"Don't know it like a book--know it like I know my gun and dawg."--"Don't know any good of it--they-uns air all rebels down that-a-way!" "Especially," said a fourth voice, "the
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McNeills." The courier from Kelly glanced at him sharply. "And what have you got, my man, against the McNeills?" "I've got something," stated the mountaineer doggedly. "Something ever since afore the Mexican War. Root and branch, I've got something against them. When I heard, over there in Grant, that they was hell-bent for the Confederacy, I just went, hell-bent, for
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the other side. Root and branch, I know them, and root and branch they're damned rebels--" "Do you know," demanded the captain, "this one? This is Lieutenant McNeill." The man looked, General Kelly's courier facing him squarely. There was a silence upon the road to Williamsport. The mountaineer spat. "He may be a lieutenant, but he ain't a McNeill. Not
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from the South Branch valley, he ain't." "He says he is." "Do you think, my friend," asked the man in question, and he looked amused, "that you really know all the McNeills, or their party? The valley of the South Branch is long and wide, and the families are large. One McNeill has simply escaped your observation." "There ain't," said
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the man, with grimness, "a damned one of them that has escaped my observation, and there ain't one of them that ain't a damned rebel. They're with Ashby now, and those of them that ain't with Ashby are with Jackson. And you may be Abraham Lincoln or General Banks, but you ain't a McNeill!" The ranks opened and there emerged
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a stout German musician. "Herr Captain! I was in Winchester before I ran away and joined der Union. Herr Captain, I haf seen this man. I haf seen him in der grey uniform, with der gold sword and der sash. And, lieber Gott, dot horse is known! Dot horse is der horse of Captain Richard Cleave. Dot horse is named
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Dundee." "'Dundee--'" exclaimed Marchmont. "That's the circumstance. You started to say 'Dundee.'" He gave an abrupt laugh. "On the whole, I like you even better than I did--but it's a question now for a drumhead and a provost guard. I'm sorry--" The other's hand had been resting upon his horse's neck. Suddenly there was a motion of his knee, a
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pressure of this hand, a curious sound, half speech, half cry, addressed to the bay beneath him. Dundee backed, gathered himself together, arose in air, cleared the rail fence, overpassed the embankment and the rivulet beneath, touched the frosted earth of the cornfield, and was away like an arrow toward the misty white river. Out of the tumult upon the
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road rang a shot. Marchmont, the smoking pistol still in hand, urged his horse to the leap, touched in turn the field below, and at top speed followed the bay. He shouted to the troopers behind him; their horses made some difficulty, but in another moment they, too, were in pursuit. Rifles flashed from the road, but the bay had
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reached a copse that gave a moment's shelter. Horse and rider emerged unhurt from the friendly walls of cedar and locust. "Forward, sharpshooters!" cried the infantry captain. A lieutenant and half a dozen men made all haste across the fence, down the low bluff, and over the field. As they ran one fired, then another, but the fleeing horse kept
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on, the rider close to the neck, in their sight, beyond the water, the Virginia shore. The bay moved as though he knew not fatigue, but only a friend's dire need. The stock told; many a race had been won by his forefathers. What his rider's hand and voice conveyed cannot be precisely known, but that which was effected was
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an access of love, courage, and understanding of the end desired. He moved with every power drawn to the point in hand. Marchmont, only a few lengths behind, fired again. The ball went through Cleave's sleeve, grazing his arm and Dundee's shoulder. The two shot on, Marchmont behind, then the two mounted men, then the sharpshooters, running afoot. From the
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road the remainder of the company watched with immemorial, white-heat interest the immemorial incident. "He's wounded--the bay's wounded, too! They'll get him at the canal!--Thar's a bridge around the bend, but he don't know it!--Climb atop the fence; ye can see better--" The canal, deep between willowy banks, a moat to be overpassed without drawbridge, lay ahead of the foremost
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horse and rider. A moment and the two burst through the screen of willows, another, and from the high, bare bank they had leaped into the narrow, deep, and sluggish stream. "That horse's wounded--he's sinking! No, by God, he ain't! Whar's the captain from Frederick! Thar he is--thar he is!" Marchmont vanished into the belt of willows. The two troopers
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had swerved; they knew of the bridge beyond the turn. Dundee swam the canal. The bank before him, up to the towpath, was of loose earth and stone, steep and difficult. He climbed it like a cat-o'-mountain. As he reached the towpath Marchmont appeared before the willows. His horse, a powerful sorrel, took the water unhesitatingly, but the opposite bank
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made trouble. It was but a short delay; while the soldiers on the road held their breath he was up and away, across the wide field between canal and river. The troopers, too, had thundered across the bridge. The sharpshooters were behind them, blue moving points between the shocked corn. The field was wide, rough, and furrowed, bordered on its
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southern side by a line of sycamores, leafless and tall, a lacework of white branches against the now brilliant sky. Beyond the sycamores lay the wide river, beyond the river lay Virginia. Dundee, red of eye and nostril, foam streaked and quivering, raced on, his rider talking to him as to a lover. But the bay was sore tired, and
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the sorrel gained. Marchmont sent his voice before him. "Surrender! You'll never reach the other side!" "I'll try mighty hard," answered Cleave between his teeth. He caressed his horse, he made their two hearts one, he talked to him, he crooned an air the stallion knew,-- Then fling ope your gates, and let me go free, For it's up with
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the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee! Superbly the bay answered. But the sorrel, too, was a thoroughbred, fresh when he left Frederick. Stride by stride he gained. Cleave crashed into the belt of sycamores. Before him was the Potomac, cold, wide, mist-veiled. He heard Marchmont break into the wood and turned. The aide's arm was raised, and a shaft of red
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sunlight struck the barrel of his pistol. Before his finger could move Cleave fired. The sorrel, pierced through the shoulder, swerved violently, reared, and plunged, all but unseating his rider. Marchmont's ball passed harmlessly between the branches of trees. The bay and his master sprang from the low bank into the flood. So veiled was it by the heavy mist
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that, six strokes from shore, all outlines grew indistinct. The two troopers reached the shore. "Where is he, sir?--Out there?" They emptied their pistols--it was firing into a cloud. The sharpshooters arrived. Skilful and grim, they raised their rifles, scanned the expanse of woolly white before them, and fired at what, now here, now there, they conceived might be a
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moving object. The mist lay close to the river, like a pall. They fired and fired again. Other infantrymen, arriving, talked excitedly. "Thar!--No, thar! That's him, downs-tream! Fire!--Darn it! 'T was a piece of drift." Across the river, tall against the south, wreathed and linked by lianas of grape, showed, far withdrawn and shadowy, the trees of the Virginia shore.
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The rifles continued to blaze, but the mist held, and there came no answering scream of horse or cry of man. Marchmont spoke at last, curtly. "That's enough! He's either hit and drowned, or he has reached home. I wish we were on the same side." One of the troopers uttered an exclamation. "Hear that, sir! He's across! Damned if
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he isn't halloaing to tell us so!" Faintly, from the southern shore, came a voice. It was raised in a line of song,-- "As Joseph was a-walking, He heard the angels sing"-- "THE BATH AND ROMNEY TRIP" Richard Cleave and his horse, two tired wights, turned a corner in the wood and came with suddenness upon a vedette, posted beneath
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a beech tree. The vedette brought his short rifle to bear upon the apparition. "Halt! Halt, you in blue! Halt, I say, or I'll blow your head off." Down an aisle of the woods, deep in russet leaves, appeared a grey figure. "Hello, Company F! It's all right! It's all right! It's Captain Cleave, 65th Virginia. Special service." Musket in
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hand, Allan came at a run through the slanting sunshine of the forest. "It's all right, Cuninghame--Colonel Ashby will understand." "Here," said the vedette, "is Colonel Ashby now." From another direction, out of the filmy and amethyst haze that closed each forest vista, came a milk-white horse, stepping high over the fallen leaves. The rider, not tall, black-bearded, with a
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pale, handsome face, sat like a study for some great sculptor's equestrian masterpiece. In a land where all rode well, his was superb horsemanship. The cape of his grey coat was lined with scarlet, his soft wide hat had a black plume; he wore long boots and white gauntlets. The three beneath the beech saluted. He spoke in a pensive
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and musical voice. "A prisoner, Cuninghame? Where did you get him?--Ah, it's Richard Cleave!" The bright December day wore on, sunny and cold in the woods, sunny and cold above the river. The water, clear now of mist, sparkled, a stream of diamonds, from shore to shore, except where rose Dam No. . Here the diamonds fell in cataracts. A
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space of crib-work, then falling gems, another bit of dry logs in the sun, then again brilliancy and thunder of water over the dam; this in sequence to the Maryland side. That side reached, there came a mere ribbon of brown earth, and beyond this ran the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. To-day boats from Cumberland were going down the canal
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with coal and forage, and boats from Harper's Ferry were coming up with a reinforcing regiment of soldiers for Lander at Hancock. It was bright and lively weather, and the negroes talked to the mules on the towpath, and the conductors of coal and forage hailed the soldiers, and the soldiers shouted back. The banks rang to laughter and voices.
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"Where're you fellows going?"--"Going to Hancock,--no, don't know where it is!"--"Purty day! Seen any rebels crost the river?"--"At Williamsport they told us there was a rebel spy got away this morning--galloped down a cliff like Israel Putnam and took to the river, and if he was drowned or not they don't know--" "No, he wasn't drowned; he got away, but
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he was shot. Anyhow, they say he hadn't been there long enough to find out anything."--"Wish _I_ could find out something--wish I could find out when we're going to fight!"--"Low braidge!"--"That's a pretty big dam. What's the troops over there in the field? Indiana? That's a right nice picnic-ground-- 'Kiss me good-bye, my dear,' he said; 'When I come back,
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we will be wed.' Crying, she kissed him, 'Good-bye, Ned!' And the soldier followed the drum, The drum, The echoing, echoing drum!" Over on the Virginia side, behind the friendly woods paced through by Ashby's men, the height of the afternoon saw the arrival of the advance guard of that portion of the Army of the Valley which was to
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cover operations against Dam No. . Later in the day came Garnett with the remainder of the Stonewall Brigade and a two-gun detachment of the Rockbridge Artillery, and by sunset the militia regiments were up. Camp was pitched behind a line of hills, within the peninsula made by the curve of the river. This rising ground masked the movement; moreover,
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with Ashby between any body of infantry and an enemy not in unreasonable force, that body worked and ate and slept in peace of mind. Six miles down the river, over on the Maryland side, was Williamsport, with an infantry command and with artillery. Opposite Dam No. in the Maryland fields beyond the canal, troops were posted, guarding that very
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stretch of river. From a little hill above the tents frowned their cannon. At Hancock, at Hagerstown, and at Frederick were other thousands, and all, from the general of the division to the corporal drilling an awkward squad in the fields beside the canal, thought of the Army of the Valley as at Winchester. With the Confederate advance guard, riding
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Little Sorrel, his cadet cap over his eyes, his uniform whole and clean, but discoloured like a November leaf from rain and dust and dust and rain, with great boots and heavy cavalry spurs, with his auburn beard and his deep-set grey-blue eyes, with his forehead broad and high, and his aquiline nose, and his mouth, wide and thin-lipped, came
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Jackson. The general's tent was a rude affair. His soldiers pitched it beneath a pine, beside a small trickling stream half choked with leaves. The staff was quartered to right and left, and a clump of pines in the rear served for an Arcadian kitchen. A camp-stool and a table made of a board laid upon two stumps of trees
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furnished the leaf-strewn terrace before the tent. Here, Cleave, coming to report, found his commander. Jackson was sitting, feet planted as usual, arms at side as usual, listening to his chief of staff. He acknowledged Cleave's salute, with a glance, a slight nod of the head, and a motion of the hand to one side. The young man waited, standing
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by a black haw upon the bank of the little stream. The respectful murmur of the chief of staff came to an end. "Very good, major. You will send a courier back to Falling Waters to halt General Carson there. He is to be prepared to make a diversion against Williamsport in the morning. I will give precise instructions later.
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What of this mill by the river?" "It is a very strong, old, stone mill, sir, with windows. It would command any short-range attack upon the workers." "Good! good! We will put riflemen there. As soon as General Garnett is up, send him to me." From the not-distant road came a heavy rumble of wheels and the sound of horses'
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feet. "There are the guns, now, sir." "Yes. They must wait until nightfall to get into position. Send Captain McLaughlin to me in half an hour's time." "Yes, sir. Captain Colston of the 2d is here--" "Very good. I will see him now. That is all, major." The chief of staff withdrew. Captain Colston of the 2d approached from the
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shadows beyond the big pine and saluted. "You are from this region, captain?" "Yes, sir. The _Honeywood_ Colstons." "This stone mill is upon your land?" "Yes, sir. My mother owns it." "You have been about the dam as a boy?" "Yes, sir. In the water above it and in the water below it. I know every log, I reckon. It
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works the mill." "If we break it, it will work the mill no longer. In addition, if the enemy cross, they will probably destroy the property." "Yes, sir. My mother and I would not let that weigh with us. As I know the construction I should esteem it an honour, sir, if I might lead the party. I think I
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may say that I know where the cribs could be most easily cut." "Very good then, sir. You will report for duty at nine to-night. Captain Holliday of the 33d and Captain Robinson of the 27th, with a number of their men, have volunteered for this service. It is not without danger, as you know. That is all." Captain Colston
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departed. "Now, Captain Cleave," said the general. A few minutes later, the report ended, Jackson refolded General Banks's letter to General Kelly and put it into his pocket-book. "Good! good!" he said, and turned slightly on the camp-stool so as to face the river and the north. "It's all right, captain, it's all right!" "I wish, sir," said Cleave, "that
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with ten times the numbers you have, you were leading us across the river. We might force a peace, I think, and that right quickly." Jackson nodded. "Yes, sir, I ought to have every soldier in Virginia--if they could be gotten here in time every soldier in the Carolinas. There would then be but a streamlet of blood where now
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there is going to be a great river. The streamlet should run through the land of them with whom we are righteously at war. As it is, the great river will run through ours." He rose. "You have done your mission well, sir. The 65th will be up presently." * * * * * It took three days to cut
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Dam No. . On the fourth the brigade went back to Winchester. A week later came Loring with the Army of the Kanawha, and on the third of January the whole force found itself again upon the road. In the afternoon the weather changed. The New Year had come in smiling, mild as April, dust in the roads, a blue
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sky overhead. The withered goldenrod and gaunt mullein stalks and dead asters by the wayside almost seemed to bloom again, while the winter wheat gave an actual vernal touch. The long column, winding somewhere--no one knew where, but anyhow on the Pugh Town Road and in a northwesterly direction (even Old Jack couldn't keep them from knowing that they were
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going northwest!)--was in high spirits. At least, the Stonewall Brigade was in spirits. It was said that Loring's men didn't want to come, anyhow. The men whistled and sang, laughed, joked, were lavish of opinions as to all the world in general and the Confederate service in particular. They were sarcastic. The Confederate private was always sarcastic, but throughout the
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morning there had been small sting in their remarks. Breakfast--"at early dawn"--was good and plentiful. Three days' rations had been served and cooked, and stowed in haversacks. But, so lovely was the weather, so oppressive in the sunshine would be a heavy weight to carry, so obliging were the wagon drivers, so easy in many regiments the Confederate discipline, that
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overcoats, blankets, and, in very many instances haversacks, had been consigned before starting to the friendly care of the wagons in the rear. The troops marched light, and in a good humour. True, Old Jack seemed bent on getting there--wherever "there" was--in a tremendous hurry. Over every smooth stretch the men were double-timed, and there was an unusual animus against
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stragglers. There grew, too, a moral certitude that from the ten minutes' lawful rest in each hour at least five minutes was being filched. Another and still more certain conclusion was that the wagon train was getting very far behind. However, the morning was still sweet, and the column, as a whole, cheerful. It was a long column--the Stonewall Brigade,
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three brigades of Loring's, five batteries, and a few cavalry companies; eight thousand, five hundred men in all. Mid-day arrived, and the halt for dinner. Alas for the men without haversacks! They looked as though they had borne all the burdens of the march. There was hunger within and scant sympathy without. "Didn't the damned fools know that Old Jack
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always keeps five miles ahead of wagon trains and hell fire?" "Here, Saunders! take these corn pones over to those damned idiots with the compliments of Mess No. . We know that they have Cherrystone oysters, canvas-back ducks, terrapin, and peach brandy in their haversacks, and that they meant to ask us to join them. So unfortunate!" The cavalry marched
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on, the artillery marched on, the infantry marched on. The bright skies subtly changed. The blue grew fainter; a haze, white, harsh, and cold, formed gradually, and a slight wind began to blow. The aster and goldenrod, the dried ironweed and sumach, the red rose hips and magenta pokeberry stalks looked dead enough now, dead and dreary upon the weary,
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weary road. The men sang no more; the more weakly shivered. Before long the sky was an even greyish-white, and the wind had much increased. Coming from the northwest, it struck the column in the face; moreover, it grew colder and colder. All types shivered now, the strong and the weak, the mounted officer and the leg-weary private, the men
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with overcoats, and the men without. The column moved slower and slower, all heads bent before the wind, which now blew with violence. It raised, too, a blinding dust. A curt order ran down the lines for less delay. The regiments changed gait, tried quick time along a level stretch, and left behind a large number of stragglers. The burst
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of speed was for naught, they went the slower thereafter, and coming to a long, bleak hill, crept up it like tortoises--but without protecting shells. By sunset the cold was intense. Word came back that the head of the column was going into camp, and a sigh of approbation arose from all. But when brigade by brigade halted, deployed, and
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broke ranks, it appeared that "going into camp" was rather a barren phrase. The wagons had not come up; there were no tents, no blankets, no provisions. A northwester was blowing, and the weather-wise said that there would be snow ere morning. The regiments spread over bare fields, enclosed by rail fences. There were a small, rapidly freezing stream and
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thick woods, skirting the fields. In the woods were fallen boughs and pine cones enough to make the axes in the company wagons not greatly missed, and detachments were sent to gather fagots. The men, cold and exhausted, went, but they looked wistfully at the rail fences all around them, so easy to demolish, so splendid to burn! Orders on
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the subject were stringent. _Officers will be held responsible for any destruction of property. We are here to protect and defend, not to destroy._ The men gathered dead branches and broke down others, heaped them together in the open fields, and made their camp-fires. The Rockbridge Artillery occupied a fallow field covered with fox grass, dead Michaelmas daisy, and drifted
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leaves. It was a good place for the poor horses, the battery thought. But the high wind blew sparks from the fires and lighted the grass. The flames spread and the horses neighed with terror. The battery was forced to move, taking up position at last in a ploughed field where the frozen furrows cut the feet, and the wind
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had the sweep of an unchained demon. An infantry regiment fared better. It was in a stretch of fenced field between the road and the freezing brook. A captain, native of that region, spoke to the lieutenant-colonel, and the latter spoke to the men. "Captain ---- says that we are camping upon his land, and he's sorry he can't give
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us a better welcome! But we can have his fence rails. Give him a cheer, and build your fires!" The men cheered lustily, and tore the rails apart, and had rousing fires and were comfortable; but the next morning Stonewall Jackson suspended from duty the donor of his own fences. The brigades of Loring undoubtedly suffered the most. They had
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seen, upon the Monterey line, on the Kanawha, the Gauley, and the Greenbriar, rough and exhausting service. And then, just when they were happy at last in winter quarters, they must pull up stakes and hurry down the Valley to join "Fool Tom Jackson" of the Virginia Military Institute and one brief day of glory at Manassas! Loring, a gallant
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and dashing officer, was popular with them. "Fool Tom Jackson" was not. They complained, and they very honestly thought that they had upon their side justice, common sense, and common humanity--to say nothing of military insight! The bitter night was bitterer to them for their discontent. Many were from eastern Virginia or from the states to the south, not yet
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inured to the winter heights and Stonewall Jackson's way. They slept on frozen ground, surrounded by grim mountains, and they dreamed uneasily of the milder lowlands, of the yet green tangles of bay and myrtle, of quiet marshes and wide, unfreezing waters. In the night-time the clouds thickened, and there came down a fine rain, mixed with snow. In the
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morning, fields, hillsides, and road appeared glazed with ice--and the wagons were not up! The country grew rougher, lonelier, a series of low mountains and partly cleared levels. To a few in the creeping column it may have occurred that Jackson chose unfrequented roads, therefore narrow, therefore worse than other roads, to the end that his policy of utter secrecy
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might be the better served; but to the majority his course seemed sprung from a certain cold wilfulness, a harshness without object, unless his object were to wear out flesh and bone. The road, such as it was, was sheeted with ice. The wind blew steadily from the northwest, striking the face like a whip, and the fine rain and
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snow continued to fall and to freeze as it fell. What, the evening before, had been hardship, now grew to actual misery. The column faltered, delayed, halted, and still the order came back, "The general commanding wishes the army to press on." The army stumbled to its now bleeding feet, and did its best with a hill like Calvary. Up
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and down the column was heard the report of muskets, men falling and accidentally discharging their pieces. The company officers lifted monotonous voices, weary and harsh as reeds by a winter pond. _Close up, men--close up--close up!_ In the afternoon Loring, riding at the head of his brigades, sent a staff officer forward with representations. The latter spurred his horse,
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