infantry, and were
answered in kind. Penhallow impatient saw that the road would soon be
clear. As he issued quick orders and men mounted in haste, a young aide
rode up, saluted, and said, "I have orders, Colonel, from General Hunt
to guide you to where he desires your guns to be parked."

"One moment," said Penhallow; "the road is a tangle of wagons:" and to
a captain, "Ride on and side-track those wagons; be quick too." Then he
said to the aide, "We have a few minutes--how are things going? I heard
of General Reynold's death, and little more."

"Yes, we were outnumbered yesterday and--well licked. Why they did not
rush us, the Lord knows!"

"Give me some idea of our position."

"Well, sir, here to our right is Cemetery Hill, strongly held; to your
left the line turns east and then south in a loop to wooded hills--one
Culp's, they call it. That is our right. There is a row on there as you
can hear. Before us as we stand our position runs south along a low ridge
and ends on two pretty high-wooded hills they call Round Tops. That's
our left. From our front the ground slopes down some forty feet or so,
and about a mile away the Rebs hold the town seminary and a long low rise
facing us."

"Thank you, that seems pretty clear. There is firing over beyond the
cemetery?"

"Yes, the skirmishers get cross now and then. The road seems clear, sir."

Orders rang out and the guns rattled up the pike like some monstrous
articulated insect, all encumbering wagons being swept aside to make way
for the privileged guns.

"You are to park here, sir, on the open between this and the Taneytown
road. There is a brook--a creek."

"Thanks, that is clear."

The ground thus chosen lay some hundred yards behind the low crest held
midway of our line by the Second Corps, whence the ground fell away in a
gentle slope. The space back of our line was in what to a layman's eye
would have seemed the wildest confusion of wagons, ambulances, ammunition
mules, cattle, and wandering men. It was slowly assuming some order as
the Provost Guard, dusty, despotic and cross, ranged the wagons, drove
back stragglers, and left wide lanes for the artillery to move at need to
the front.

The colonel spent some hours in getting his guns placed and in seeing
that no least detail was lacking. With orders about instant readiness,
with a word of praise here, of sharp criticism there, he turned away a
well-contented man and walked up the slope in search of t