bayonet-narrow, drunken, zigzag, world's-end-and-no-to-morrow cow
track!"

It was not only the road. All nature had new aspects for the Confederate
soldier; day by day a deeper shade of personality. So much of him was
farmer that he was no stranger to the encampment of the earth. He was
weather-wise, knew the soil, named the trees, could _orientate_ himself,
had a fighting knowledge, too, of blight and drouth, hail, frost, high
wind, flood, too little and too much of sun fire. Probably he had
thought that he knew all that was to be told. When he volunteered it was
not with the expectation of learning any other manual than that of arms.
As is generally the case, he learned that what he expected was but a
mask for what he did not expect. He learned other manuals, among them
that of earth, air, fire, and water. His ideas of the four underwent
modification. First of all he learned that they were combatants, active
participants in the warfare which he had thought a matter only of armies
clad in blue and armies clad in grey. Apparently nothing was passive,
nothing neutral. Bewilderingly, also, nothing was of a steadfast faith.
Sun, moon, darkness and light, heat and cold, snow, rain, mud, dust,
mountain, forest, hill, dale, stream, bridge, road, wall, house,
hay-rick, dew, mist, storm, everything!--they fought first on one side
then on the other. Sometimes they did this in rapid succession,
sometimes they seemed to fight on both sides at once; the only attitude
they never took was one immaterial to the business in hand. Moreover
they were vitally for or against the individual soldier; now his
friend, now his foe, now flattering, caressing, bringing gifts, now
snatching away, digging pitfalls, working wreck and ruin. They were
stronger than he, strong and capricious beyond all reckoning. Sometimes
he loved these powers; sometimes he cursed them. Indifference, only, was
gone. He and they were alike sentient, active, conscious, inextricably
mingled.

To-night the pike was cool and hard. There were clouds above, but not
heavy; streams of stars ran between. To either side of the road lay
fields of wheat, of clover, of corn, banded and broken by shadowy
forest. Massanutton loomed ahead. There was a wind blowing. Together
with the sound of marching feet, the jingle of accoutrements, the
striking of the horses' hoofs against loose stones, the heavy noise of
the guns in the rear, it filled the night like the roar of a distant
cata