rest a track something like Christian's through the Slough of
Despond. The artillery brought up the rear and fared worst of all. Guns
and caissons slid heavily into deep mud holes. The horses strained--poor
brutes! but their iron charges stuck fast. The drivers used whip and
voice, the officers swore, there arose calls for Sergeant Jordan.
Appearing, that steed tamer picked his way to the horses' heads, spoke
to them, patted them, and in a reasonable voice said, "Get up!" They did
it, and the train dragged on to the next bog, deeper than before. Then
_da capo_--stuck wheels, straining teams, oaths, adjuration, at last
"Sergeant Jordan!"

So abominable was the road that the army went like a tortoise, a mud
tortoise. Twilight found it little more than five miles from its
starting-point, and the bivouac that night was by the comfortless
roadside, in the miry bushes, with fires of wet wood, and small and poor
rations. Clouds were lowering and a chilly wind fretted the forests of
the Blue Ridge. Around one of the dismal, smoky fires an especially
dejected mess found a spokesman with a vocabulary rich in comminations.

"Sh!" breathed one of the ring. "Officer coming by. Heard you too,
Williams--all that about Old Jack."

A figure wrapped in a cloak passed just upon the rim of the firelight.
"I don't think, men," said a voice, "that you are in a position to
judge. If I have brought you by this road it is for your own good."

He passed on, the darkness taking him. Day dawned as best it might
through grey sheets of rain. Breakfast was a mockery, damp hardtack
holding the centre of the stage. A very few men had cold coffee in their
canteens, but when they tried to heat it the miserable fire went out. On
marched the Army of the Valley, in and out of the great rain-drenched,
mist-hidden mountains, on the worst road to Port Republic. Road,
surrounding levels, and creek-bed had somehow lost identity. One was
like the other, and none had any bottom. Each gun had now a corps of
pioneers, who, casting stone and brushwood into the morass, laboriously
built a road for the piece. Whole companies of infantry were put at this
work. The officers helped, the staff dismounted and helped, the
commanding general was encountered, rain-dripping, mud-spattered, a log
on his shoulder or a great stone in his hands. All this day they made
but five miles, and at night they slept in something like a lake, with a
gibing wind above to whisper _What's i