der the crumbling walls of
Mifflin, and prayed for the friendly cover of night to fall to hide
them from that storm of fire and shell, and yet fought on.

CHAPTER XV

THE FLAG OF TRUCE

The long hard winter soon came on, and we retired to Valley Forge to
suffer and to bear what was far more deadly than the English
bullets--the terrible cold and desolation of that dreary place. Cold,
bitterly cold it was, as the wind came down from the mountains, swept
over the broad fields, pierced through our torn and tattered garments,
and racked our frames with pain. And yet, terrible as the exposure
was, there stands out one bright day in all that dreary winter, one
day, one hour in which I forgot all the cold and the hardships and
would not have been elsewhere for anything in the wide world.

It was near the setting of the sun on one of the bleakest and coldest
days of the year. The sun itself was sinking behind the distant hills,
and the sky was brilliant with its fiery javelins, which threw a lurid
light across the cold gray heavens, the last protest of departing day
against the approach of the chill dismal night. The snow lay heavy
upon the ground, and spread like a great white pall over the sins and
sorrows of the world. Before us stretched the road, unbroken and
trackless; not a man had passed that way, for we stood guard at the
outpost, and the flicker of the foeman's fire could be seen six
hundred yards away, through the gloom.

"Lucifer, but it is cold!" said one of the guard, as he threw another
rail on the fire and held his hands out over the flames to warm them.

"Aye; Old Nick himself would not be a bad acquaintance now--his smell
of brimstone and sulphur might warm us up a bit," said another.

We were making the best we could of it, under the lee of a high bank
by the side of the road, where we had cleared a space and stacked a
good supply of dry fence-rails to feed the fire during the night. The
wind from the northwest swept over our heads, sheltered as we were by
the bank, and we would have defied the cold that crept ever upward but
for the rags and tatters that covered our frames. The men themselves
were cheerful, as they sat hugging the fire, and laughed and joked at
their hardships.

"I wonder if those Highland devils will bother us to-night?" asked
one, for the Black Watch held the outpost down the road.

"They will be too busy warming their knees," came the reply from
across the fire, and a la