ther and sister could visit it then. Permission was
given. It lay now in an ambulance, covered with a flag. Cleave lay upon
the straw beside it, his arm flung across the breast. At its feet sat a
dark and mournful figure, old Tullius with his chin propped on his
knees.

The rain came down, fine as needles' points and cold. Somewhere far
below a mountain stream was rushing, and in the darkness the wind was
sighing. The road wound higher. The lead horses, drawing a gun, stepped
too near the edge of the road. The wet earth gave way. The unfortunate
brutes plunged, struggled, went down and over the embankment, dragging
the wheel horses after them. Gun, carriage, and caisson followed. The
echoes awoke dismally. The infantry, climbing above, looked down the far
wooded slopes, but incuriously. The infantry was tired, cold, and
famished; it was not interested in artillery accidents. Perhaps at times
the Old Guard had felt thus, with a sick and cold depression, kibed
spirits as well as heels, empty of enthusiasm as of food, resolution
lost somewhere in the darkness, sonority gone even from "_l'empereur_"
and "_la France_." Slowly, amid drizzling rain, brigade after brigade
made Brown's Gap and bivouacked within the dripping forest.

Morning brought a change. The rain yet fell, but the army was recovering
from the battlefield. It took not long, nowadays, to recover. The army
was learning to let the past drop into the abyss and not to listen for
the echoes. It seemed a long time that the country had been at war, and
each day's events drove across and hid the event of the day before.
Speculation as to the morrow remained, but even this hung loosely upon
the Army of the Valley. Wonderment as to the next move partook less of
deep anxiety than of the tantalization of guessing at a riddle with the
answer always just eluding you. The army guessed and guessed--bothering
with the riddle made its chief occupation while it rested for two days
and nights, beside smoky camp-fires, in a cold June rain, in the cramped
area of Brown's Gap; but so assured was it that Old Jack knew the proper
answer, and would give it in his own good time, that the guessing had
little fretfulness or edge of temper. By now, officers and men, the
confidence was implicit. "Tell General Jackson that we will go wherever
he wishes us to go, and do whatever he wishes us to do."

On the morning of the twelfth "at early dawn" the army found itself
again in column. The ra