he ravine were the Confederates, their skirmish line about three
hundred yards beyond it, and their nightly vedette posts nobody knew
where, for they used similar economy to ours in withdrawing their
vedettes in the day. The Doctor's talks, many of which I can but barely
mention, had opened my eyes a little to the possibility of accurate
inferences, that is to say, his philosophy of cause and effect, or
purpose, as he liked better to call it, had been urged upon me so
frequently and so profoundly that I had become more observant; he had
made me think of the relations of things. Philosophy, he had said,
should be carried into everyday life and into the smallest matters; that
was what made a good fisherman, a good farmer, a good merchant, and a
good soldier, provided, he had added, there could be such a thing. This
ravine, then, had attracted me from the first. I saw that it presented
opportunity. A few rebels might creep along it, get into the woods, make
prisoners of the vedettes on several posts, and then there would be a
gap through which our skirmish line might be surprised.

I went quietly forward in the edge of the woods until I stood near the
ravine, and examined it as well as I could for the darkness. It did not
extend into the forest, for the roots of the trees there protected the
soil from washing away. The undergrowth at my left was not very dense; I
judged that in daylight one could see into the forest a hundred yards or
more. At my right, the gully began and seemed to widen and deepen as it
went, but nothing definite could I make out; all was lost in the night.

My examination of the spot had been made very quickly, for I was really
transgressing rule in leaving my post, even for a more forward place but
thirty yards away, and I was back at my tree in less than a minute.

The two men were yet lying in the hole; they had not observed my short
absence, I was glad to see. I did not know these men, and I would not
like them to know that I had left my post. Yet I felt that I had done
right in leaving it; I had deserted it, technically speaking, but only
to take a proper precaution, in regard to the post itself. Then, what is
a man's post? Merely the ground with which the soles of his feet are in
touch? If he may move an inch, how far may he move? Yet I was glad that
the men had not seen me move and come back, and I was glad, too, that
they had made the proposal that I should take the first watch, for I had
disco