, Marse Plunkett, he's fur de Un'on, but he's pow'ful feared er de
Yankees," he returned.

Bland broke into a laugh. "Oh, come, that's downright treason," he
protested merrily. "Your Marse Plunkett's a skulker sure enough, and you
may tell him so with my compliments. You're on the Yankee side, too, I
reckon, and there're bullets in these pies, sure as I live."

The old man shuffled nervously on his bare feet.

"Go 'way, Marster, w'at I know 'bout 'sides'?" he replied, tilting his keg
to drain the last few drops into the canteen of a thirsty soldier. "I'se on
de Lawd's side, dat's whar I is."

He fell back startled, for the call of "Column, forward!" was shouted down
the road, and in an instant the men had left the emptied cart, and were
marching on into the sunny distance.

As the afternoon lengthened the heat grew more oppressive. Straight ahead
there was dust and sunshine and the ceaseless tramp, and on either side the
fresh fields were scorched and whitened by a powdering of hot sand. Beyond
the rise and dip of the hills, the mountains burned like blue flames on the
horizon, and overhead the sky was hard as an inverted brazier.

Dan had begun to limp, for his stiff boots galled his feet. His senses were
blunted by the hot sand which filled his eyes and ears and nostrils, and
there was a shimmer over all the broad landscape. When he shook his hair
from his forehead, the dust floated slowly down and settled in a scorching
ring about his neck.

The day closed gradually, and as they neared the river, the mountains
emerged from obscure outlines into wooded heights upon which the trees
showed soft and gray in the sunset. A cool breath was blown through a strip
of damp woodland, where the pale bodies of the sycamores were festooned in
luxuriant vines, and from the twilight long shadows stretched across the
red clay road. Then, as they went down a rocky slope, a fringe of willows
appeared suddenly from the blur of green, and they saw the Shenandoah
running between falling banks, with the colours of the sunset floating like
pink flowers upon its breast.

With a shout the front line plunged into the stream, holding its heavy
muskets high above the current of the water, and filing upon the opposite
bank, into a rough road which wound amid the ferns.

Midway of the river, near the fording point, there was a little island
which lay like a feathery tree-top upon the tinted water; and as Dan went
by, he felt the brush of w