XI. A VAIN PURSUIT

XII. IN WINTER QUARTERS

XIII. THE COMING OF GRANT

XIV. THE GHOSTLY RIDE

XV. THE WILDERNESS

XVI. SPOTTSYLVANIA




THE SHADES OF THE WILDERNESS


CHAPTER I

THE SOUTHERN RETREAT


A train of wagons and men wound slowly over the hills in the darkness and
rain toward the South. In the wagons lay fourteen or fifteen thousand
wounded soldiers, but they made little noise, as the wheels sank suddenly
in the mud or bumped over stones. Although the vast majority of them
were young, boys or not much more, they had learned to be masters of
themselves, and they suffered in silence, save when some one, lost in