night."

The two soldiers saluted and left the room, going softly through the
hall, past the door where the aide was now studying the Capture of Andre
and out into the moonlight. They walked down the long board path to the
gate, unlatched this, and turned their faces toward the camp. For some
distance they were as silent as the street before them; then, "If ever
you had taught school," said Allan, "you would know how headings out of
reading books and sentences that you set for the children to copy have a
way of starting up before you at every corner. _The Post of Honour is
the Post of Danger._ I can see that in round hand. But what I can't see
is how you are going to do it."

"I want," said the other, "one half-hour quite to myself. Then I think
I'll know. Here's the picket. The word's _Bethel_."

The Stonewall Brigade was encamped in the fields just without the town.
It was early in the war and there were yet tents--long line of canvas
"A's" stretching in the moonlight far over the rolling ground. Where the
tents failed there had been erected tiny cabins, very rude, with
abundant ventilation and the strangest chimneys. A few field officers
were quartered in the town and Jackson had with him there his permanent
staff. But captains and lieutenants stayed with the men. The general of
them all ruled with a rod of iron. For the most part it swayed lightly,
with a certain moral effect only over the head of the rank and file, but
it grew to a crushing beam for the _officer_ who did not with alacrity
habitually attend to his every duty, great or small. The do-nothing, the
popinjay, the intractable, the self-important, the remonstrant, the _I
thought, sir_--the _It is due to my dignity, sir_--none of these
flourished in the Army of the Valley. The tendencies had been there, of
course; they came up like the flowers of spring, but each poor bloom as
it appeared met an icy blast. The root beneath learned to send up to the
sky a sturdier growth.

Company A, 65th Virginia, numbered in its ranks men who knew all about
log cabins. It was well lodged, and the captain's hut did it credit.
Richard Cleave and Allan, entering, found a fire, and Tullius nodding
beside it. At their step he roused himself, rose, and put on another
log. He was a negro of sixty years, tall and hale, a dignified master of
foraging, a being simple and taciturn and strong, with a love for every
clod of earth at Three Oaks where he had been born.

Cleave spoke