e might do so. But I'm not strong
enough to lift him."

"I air," said Billy. He set down the bucket that he carried. "I jest
filled it from the creek. It don't last any time, they air so thirsty!
You take it, and I'll take him." He put his arms under the blue figure,
lifted it like a child, and moved away, noiseless in the darkness.
Corbin Wood took the bucket and dipper. Presently it must be refilled.
By the creek he met an officer sent down from the hillside. "You twenty
men out there have got to be very careful. If their sentries see or hear
you moving you'll be thought a skirmish line with the whole of us
behind, and every gun will be opening! Battle's decided on for
to-morrow, not for to-night.--Now be careful, or we'll recall every
damned life-in-your-hand blessed volunteer of you!--Oh, it's a fighting
chaplain--I beg your pardon, I'm sure, sir! But you'd better all be very
quiet. Old Jack would say that mercy's all right, but you mustn't alarm
the foe."

All through the night there streamed the boreal lights. The living and
the dying, the ruined town, the plain, the hills, the river lay beneath.
The blue army slept and waked, the grey army slept and waked. The
general officers of both made little or no pretence at sleeping. Plans
must be made, plans must be made, plans must be made. Stonewall Jackson,
in his tent, laid himself down indeed for two hours and slept, guarded
by Jim, like a man who was dead. At the end of that time he rose and
asked for his horse.

It was near dawn. He rode beneath the fading streamers, before his
lines, before the Light Division and Early and Taliaferro, before his
old brigade--the Stonewall. The 65th lay in a pine wood, down-sloping to
a little stream. Reveille was yet to sound. The men lay in an uneasy
sleep, but some of the officers were astir, and had been so all night.
These, as Jackson checked Little Sorrel, came forward and saluted. He
spoke to the colonel. "Colonel Erskine, your regiment did well. I saw it
at the Crossing."

Erskine, a small, brave, fiery man, coloured with pleasure. "I'm very
glad, sir. The regiment's all right, sir. The old stock wasn't quite cut
down, and it's made the new like it--" He hesitated, then as the general
with his "Good! good!" gathered up the reins he took heart of grace.
"It's old colonel, sir--it's old colonel--" he stammered, then out it
came: "Richard Cleave trained us so, sir, that we couldn't go back!"

"See, sir," said Stonewall J