. Jackson spoke but once. "Delightful
excitement," he said.

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE FIELD OF MANASSAS

The column, after an extraordinary march attended by skirmishes, most
wearily winding through a pitch black night, heard the "Halt!" with
rejoicing. "Old Jack be thanked! So we ain't turning on our tail and
going back through Thoroughfare Gap after all! See anything of Marse
Robert?--Go away! he ain't any nearer than White Plains. He and
Longstreet won't get through Thoroughfare until to-morrow--_Break
ranks!_ Oh Lord, yes! with pleasure."

Under foot there was rough, somewhat rolling ground. In the dark night
men dropped down without particularity as to couch or bedchamber. Nature
and the time combined to spread for them a long and echoing series of
sleeping rooms, carpeted and tapestried according to Nature's whim,
vaulted with whistling storm or drift of clouds or pageantry of stars.
The troops took the quarters indicated sometimes with, sometimes without
remark. To-night there was little speech of any kind before falling into
dreamless slumber. "O hell! Hungry as a dog!"--"Me, too!"--"Can't you
just _see_ Manassas Junction and Stuart's and Trimble's fellows gorging
themselves? Biscuit and cake and pickles and 'desecrated' vegetables and
canned peaches and sardines and jam and coffee!--freight cars and wagons
and storehouses just filled with jam and coffee and canned peaches and
cigars and--" "I wish that fool would hush! I wasn't hungry
before!"--"and nice cozy fires, and rashers of bacon broiling, and
plenty of coffee, and all around just like daisies in the field, clean
new shirts, and drawers and socks, and handkerchiefs and shoes and
writing paper and soap."--"Will you go to hell and stop talking as you
go?"--"Seems somehow an awful lonely place, boys!--dark and a wind. Hear
that whippoorwill? Just twenty thousand men sloshin' round--and Pope may
be right over there by the whippoorwill. Jarrow says that with McCall
and Heintzelman and Fitz John Porter, there are seventy thousand of
them. Well? They've got Headquarters-in-the-saddle and we've got
Stonewall Jackson--That's so! that's so! Good-night."

Dawn came calmly up, dawn of the twenty-eighth of August. The ghostly
trumpets blew--the grey soldiers stirred and rose. In the sky were yet a
star or two and a pale quarter moon. These slowly faded and the faintest
coral tinge overspread that far and cold eastern heaven. The men were
busied about breakfas