we marched down from our eyrie; all one bright
wintry night we climbed the great wooded ridge opposite. How romantic it
all was; the sunset valleys full of visible sleep; the glades suffused and
interpenetrated with moonlight; the long valley of the Greenbrier
stretching away to we knew not what silent cities; the river itself unseen
under its "astral body" of mist! Then there was the "spice of danger."

Once we heard shots in front; then there was a long wait. As we trudged on
we passed something--some things--lying by the wayside. During another
wait we examined them, curiously lifting the blankets from their
yellow-clay faces. How repulsive they looked with their blood-smears,
their blank, staring eyes, their teeth uncovered by contraction of the
lips! The frost had begun already to whiten their deranged clothing. We
were as patriotic as ever, but we did not wish to be that way. For an hour
afterward the injunction of silence in the ranks was needless.

* * * * *

Repassing the spot the next day, a beaten, dispirited and exhausted force,
feeble from fatigue and savage from defeat, some of us had life enough
left, such as it was, to observe that these bodies had altered their
position. They appeared also to have thrown off some of their clothing,
which lay near by, in disorder. Their expression, too, had an added
blankness--they had no faces.

As soon as the head of our straggling column had reached the spot a
desultory firing had begun. One might have thought the living paid honors
to the dead. No; the firing was a military execution; the condemned, a
herd of galloping swine. They had eaten our fallen, but--touching
magnanimity!--we did not eat theirs.

The shooting of several kinds was very good in the Cheat Mountain country,
even in 1861.

WHAT I SAW OF SHILOH

I

This is a simple story of a battle; such a tale as may be told by a
soldier who is no writer to a reader who is no soldier.

The morning of Sunday, the sixth day of April, 1862, was bright and warm.
Reveille had been sounded rather late, for the troops, wearied with long
marching, were to have a day of rest. The men were idling about the embers
of their bivouac fires; some preparing breakfast, others looking
carelessly to the condition of their arms and accoutrements, against the
inevitable inspection; still others were chatting with indolent dogmatism
on that never-failing theme, the end and object of the campai