d, an aide behind him.
"Find out if a soldier named Deaderick is here."

The soldier named Deaderick appeared. Jackson nodded to the aide who
withdrew, then crossing to the fire, he seated himself upon a log. It
was late; far and wide the troops lay sleeping. A pale moon looked down;
somewhere off in the distance an owl hooted. The Wilderness lay still as
the men, then roused itself and whispered a little, then sank again into
deathlike quiet.

The two men, general and disgraced soldier, held themselves for a moment
quiet as the Wilderness. Cleave knew most aspects of the man sitting on
the log, in the gleam of the fire. He saw that to-night there was not
the steel-like mood, cold, convinced, and stubborn, the wintry
harshness, the granite hardness which Stonewall Jackson chiefly used
toward offenders. He did not know what it was, but he thought that his
general had softened.

With the perception there came a change in himself. He had entered this
ring in the Wilderness with a constriction of the heart, a quick
farewell to whatever in life he yet held dear, a farewell certainly to
the soldier's life, to the army, to the guns, to the service of the
country, an iron bracing of every nerve to meet an iron thrust. And now
the thrust had not yet come, and the general looked at him quietly, as
one well-meaning man looks at another who also means well. He had
suffered much and long. Something rose into his throat, the muscles of
his face worked slightly, he turned his head aside. Jackson waited
another moment,--then, the other having recovered himself, spoke with
quietness.

"You did, at White Oak Swamp, take it upon yourself to act, although
there existed in your mind a doubt as to whether your orders--the orders
you say you received--would bear that construction?"

"Yes, general."

"And your action proved a wrong action?"

"It proved a mistaken action, sir."

"It is the same thing. It entailed great loss with peril of greater."

"Yes, general."

"Had the brigade followed there might have ensued a general and
disastrous engagement. The enemy were in force there--_as I knew_. Your
action brought almost the destruction of your regiment. It brought the
death of many brave men, and to a certain extent endangered the whole.
That is so."

"Yes, general. It is so."

"Good! There was an order delivered to you. The man from whose lips you
took it is dead. His reputation was that of a valiant, intelligent, and
trustwor