of human effluvia, of sweat-dampened
clothing, of blood and powder grime. There was not much crying aloud;
only when a man was brought in raving, or when there came a sharp scream
from some form under the surgeon's knife. But the place seemed one
groan, a sound that swelled or sank, but never ceased. The shadows on
the wall, fantastically dancing, mocked this with nods and becks and
waving arms,--mocked the groaning, mocked the heat, mocked the smell,
mocked the thirst, mocked nausea, agony, delirium, and the rattle in the
throat, mocked the helpers and the helped, mocked the night and the
world and the dying and the dead. At dawn the cannon began again.

CHAPTER XXXII

GAINES'S MILL

Dawn broke cold and pure, the melancholy ashen seas slowly, slowly
turning to chill ethereal meads of violets, the violet more slowly yet
giving place to Adonis gardens of rose and daffodil. The forests stood
dew-drenched and shadowy, solemn enough, deep and tangled woodlands that
they were, under the mysterious light, in the realm of the hour whose
finger is at her lips. The dawn made them seem still, and yet they were
not still. They and the old fields and the marshes and the wild and
tangled banks of sluggish water-courses, and the narrow, hidden roads,
and the low pine-covered hilltops, and all the vast, overgrown, and
sombre lowland were filled with the breathing of two armies. In the cold
glory of the dawn there faced each other one hundred and eighty thousand
men bent on mutual destruction.

A body of grey troops, marching toward Cold Harbour, was brought to a
halt within a taller, deeper belt than usual. Oak and sycamore, pine and
elm, beech, ash, birch and walnut, all towered toward the violet meads.
A light mist garlanded their tops, and a graceful, close-set underbrush
pressed against their immemorial trunks. It was dank and still, dim and
solemn within such a forest cavern. Minutes passed. The men sat down on
the wet, black earth. The officers questioned knew only that Fitz John
Porter was falling back from Beaver Dam Creek, presumably on his next
line of intrenchments, and that, presumably, we were following. "Has
Jackson joined?" "Can't tell you that. If he hasn't, well, we'll beat
them anyhow!"

This body of troops had done hard fighting the evening before and was
tired enough to rest. Some of the men lay down, pillowing their heads on
their arms, dozing, dozing in the underbrush, in the misty light,
beneath th