e, too late to correct General Sickles'
unfortunate decision to improve General Meade's battle-line. It was
not Penhallow's business, nor did he then fully understand that costly
blunder. Returning to his guns, he sent, as Hunt had ordered, two of
his reserve batteries up to the back of the line of the Second Corps,
and finding General Gibbon temporarily in command walked with him to
what is now called the "Crest" and stood among Cushing's guns. Alertly
interested, Penhallow saw to the left, half hidden by bushes and a
clump of trees, a long line of infantry lying at ease, their muskets in
glittering stacks behind them. To the right the ground was more open. A
broken stone fence lay in front of the Second Corps. It was patched with
fence rails and added stone, and where the clump of trees projected in
advance of the line made a right angle and extended thence in front of
the batteries on the Crest about thirty yards. Then it met a like right
angle of stone fencing and followed the line far to the right. Behind
these rude walls lay the Pennsylvania and New York men, three small
regiments. Further back on a little higher ground was the silent array of
cannon, thus able at need to fire over the heads of the guarding
infantry, now idly lying at rest in the baking heat of a July morning.
The men about the cannon lounged at ease on the ground in the forty foot
interspaces between the batteries, some eighteen pieces in all.

Suddenly an aide rode up, and saying, "See you again, Penhallow," Gibbon
rode away in haste. Penhallow, who was carefully gathering in all that
could then be seen from the locality, moved over to where a young battery
captain was leaning against a cannon wheel wiping the sweat from his face
or gazing over the vale below him, apparently lost in thought. "Captain
Cushing, I believe," said the colonel. "I am Colonel Penhallow, in
command of the reserve artillery."

"Indeed!" said the young officer. "These are some of your guns--"

"Not mine--I was out of it long ago. They still carry the brand of my old
iron-mills."

"We shall see, sir, that they do honour to your name."

"I am sure of that," returned the colonel, looking at the face of the
officer, who as he spoke patted the gun beside him in an affectionate
way.

"It seems very peaceful," he said.

"Yes, yes," returned Penhallow, "very."

They looked for a moment of silence down the vale before them, where a
mile away the ground rose to a low ridge