allying.

Well, one night the order came; we were to go south in the
morning--thirty thousand of us, and put an end to the war. We did not
get away until afternoon--it was the 6th of July. When we were off,
horse and foot, so that I could see miles of the blue column before and
behind me, I felt sorry for the mistaken South. On the evening of the
18th our camp-fires on either side of the pike at Centreville glowed
like the lights of a city. We knew the enemy was near, and began to feel
a tightening of the nerves. I wrote a letter to the folks at home for
post mortem delivery, and put it into my trousers pocket. A friend in my
company called me aside after mess.

'Feel of that,' he said, laying his hand on a full breast.

'Feathers!' he whispered significantly. 'Balls can't go through 'em, ye
know. Better n a steel breastplate! Want some?

'Don't know but I do,' said I.

We went into his tent, where he had a little sack full, and put a good
wad of them between my two shirts.

'I hate the idee o'bein'hit 'n the heart,' he said. 'That's too awful.

I nodded my assent.

'Shouldn't like t'have a ball in my lungs, either,' he added. ''Tain't
necessary fer a man t'die if he can only breathe. If a man gits his
leg shot off an' don't lose his head an' keeps drawin' his breath right
along smooth an even, I don't see why he can't live.

Taps sounded. We went asleep with our boots on, but nothing happened.

Three days and nights we waited. Some called it a farce, some swore,
some talked of going home. I went about quietly, my bosom under its pad
of feathers. The third day an order came from headquarters. We were
to break camp at one-thirty in the morning and go down the pike
after Beauregard. In the dead of the night the drums sounded. I rose,
half-asleep, and heard the long roll far and near. I shivered in the
cold night air as I made ready, the boys about me buckled on knapsacks,
shouldered their rifles, and fell into line. Muffled in darkness there
was an odd silence in the great caravan forming rapidly and waiting for
the word to move. At each command to move forward I could hear only
the rub of leather, the click, click of rifle rings, the stir of the
stubble, the snorting of horses. When we had marched an hour or so I
could hear the faint rumble of wagons far in the rear. As I came high on
a hill top, in the bending column, the moonlight fell upon a league
of bayonets shining above a cloud of dust in the valley--a