hreshold, where his beef-hide shoes were covered with
fine snow. "I don't reckon Marse Robert could ha' beat that."

"Marse Robert ain't never tried," put in a companion by the fire.

"Wall, I ain't sayin' he had," corrected the first speaker, through a cloud
of smoke. "Lord, I hope when my time comes I kin slip into heaven on Marse
Robert's coat-tails."

"If you don't, you won't never git thar!" jeered the second. Then they
settled themselves again, and listened with sombre faces and twitching
lips.

It was during this winter that Dan learned how one man's influence may fuse
individual and opposing wills into a single supreme endeavour. The Army of
Northern Virginia, as he saw it then, was moulded, sustained, and made
effective less by the authority of the Commander than by the simple power
of Lee over the hearts of the men who bore his muskets. For a time Dan had
sought to trace the groundspring of this impassioned loyalty, seeking a
reason that could not be found in generals less beloved. Surely it was not
the illuminated figure of the conqueror, for when had the Commander held
closer the affection of his troops than in that ill-starred campaign into
Maryland, which left the moral victory of a superb fight in McClellan's
hands? No, the charm lay deeper still, beyond all the fictitious aids of
fortune--somewhere in that serene and noble presence he had met one evening
as the gray dusk closed, riding alone on an old road between level fields.
After this it was always as a high figure against a low horizon that he had
seen the man who made his army.

As the long winter passed away, he learned, not only much of the spirit of
his own side, but something that became almost a sunny tolerance, of the
great blue army across the Rappahannock. He had exchanged Virginian tobacco
for Northern coffee at the outposts, and when on picket duty along the cold
banks of the river he would sometimes shout questions and replies across
the stream. In these meetings there was only a wide curiosity with little
bitterness; and once a friendly New England picket had delivered a
religious homily from the opposite shore, as he leaned upon his rifle.

"I didn't think much of you Rebs before I came down here," he had concluded
in a precise and energetic shout, "but I guess, after all, you've got souls
in your bodies like the rest of us."

"I reckon we have. Any coffee over your side?"

"Plenty. The war's interfered considerably with the tob