ion of spirit was this: during the previous night he had served
on the picket-guard, and had been posted as a sentinel in this very
forest. The night was clear, though moonless, but in the gloom of the
wood the darkness was deep. Grayrock's post was at a considerable
distance from those to right and left, for the pickets had been thrown
out a needless distance from the camp, making the line too long for the
force detailed to occupy it. The war was young, and military camps
entertained the error that while sleeping they were better protected by
thin lines a long way out toward the enemy than by thicker ones close
in. And surely they needed as long notice as possible of an enemy's
approach, for they were at that time addicted to the practice of
undressing--than which nothing could be more unsoldierly. On the morning
of the memorable 6th of April, at Shiloh, many of Grant's men when
spitted on Confederate bayonets were as naked as civilians; but it
should be allowed that this was not because of any defect in their
picket line. Their error was of another sort: they had no pickets. This
is perhaps a vain digression. I should not care to undertake to interest
the reader in the fate of an army; what we have here to consider is that
of Private Grayrock.

For two hours after he had been left at his lonely post that Saturday
night he stood stock-still, leaning against the trunk of a large tree,
staring into the darkness in his front and trying to recognize known
objects; for he had been posted at the same spot during the day. But all
was now different; he saw nothing in detail, but only groups of things,
whose shapes, not observed when there was something more of them to
observe, were now unfamiliar. They seemed not to have been there before.
A landscape that is all trees and undergrowth, moreover, lacks
definition, is confused and without accentuated points upon which
attention can gain a foothold. Add the gloom of a moonless night, and
something more than great natural intelligence and a city education is
required to preserve one's knowledge of direction. And that is how it
occurred that Private Grayrock, after vigilantly watching the spaces in
his front and then imprudently executing a circumspection of his whole
dimly visible environment (silently walking around his tree to
accomplish it) lost his bearings and seriously impaired his usefulness
as a sentinel. Lost at his post--unable to say in which direction to
look for an en