food cooked
that morning. The biscuit and the bacon tasted very good; not enough of
either, it was true, but still something. The road above the river rose
steeply, for here was the Blue Ridge, lofty and dark, rude with rock,
and shaggy with untouched forests. This was the pass through the
mountains, this was Ashby's Gap. The brigade climbed with the road,
tired and silent and grim. The day had somehow been a foretaste of war;
the men had a new idea of the draught and of the depth of the cup. They
felt older, and the air, blowing down from the mountains, seemed the air
of a far country toward which they had been travelling almost without
knowing it. They saw now that it was a strange country, much unlike that
in which they had hitherto lived. They climbed slowly between dark crag
and tree, and wearily. All song and jest had died; they were tired
soldiers, hungry now for sleep. _Close up, men, close up!_

They came to the height of the pass, marked by a giant poplar whose
roots struck deep into four counties. Here again there was a ten
minutes' halt; the men sank down upon the soft beds of leaf and mould.
Their eyelids drooped; they were in a dream at once, and in a dream
heard the _Fall in--fall in, men!_ The column stumbled to its feet and
began the descent of the mountain.

Clouds came up; at midnight when they reached the lower slope, it was
raining. Later they came to the outskirts of the village of Paris, to a
grove of mighty oaks, and here the brigade was halted for the night. The
men fell upon the ground and slept. No food was taken, and no sentries
were posted. An aide, very heavy-eyed, asked if guard should not be set.
"No, sir," answered the general. "Let them sleep." "And you, sir?" "I
don't feel like it. I'll see that there is no alarm." With his cloak
about him, with his old cadet cap pulled down over his eyes, awkward and
simple and plain, he paced out the night beneath the trees, or sat upon
a broken rail fence, watching his sleeping soldiers and, the aide
thought, praying.

The light rain ceased, the sky cleared, the pale dawn came up from the
east. In the first pink light the bugles sounded. Up rose the First
Brigade, cooked and ate its breakfast, swung out from the oak grove upon
the highroad, and faced the rising sun. The morning was divinely cool,
the men in high spirits, Piedmont and the railway were but six miles
down the road. The First Brigade covered the distance by eight o'clock.
There was