dropped it into his fire, upsetting the frying pan in which he had
other store of things desirable. Repairing all this damage as he
might, he lit his pipe and leaned against the tree, sitting with his
knees high in front of him. There came other bullets, singing,
sighing. Another bullet found that same line as the man sat there
smoking.

Overhead were small birds, chirping, singing, twittering. A long black
line of crows passed, tumbling in the air, with much confusion of
chatter and clangour of complaint that their harvest, too, had been
disturbed. They had been busy. Why should men play this game when
there were serious things of life?

The general played calmly, and ever the points and edges and fronts of
his advance came on, pressing in toward the last row of the board,
toward the line where lay the boys of Louisburg. Many a boy was pale
and sick that day, in spite of the encouraging calm or the biting jests
of the veterans. The strange sighings in the air became more numerous
and more urgent. Now and then bits of twigs and boughs and leaves came
sifting down, cut by invisible shears, and now and then a sapling
jarred with the thud of an unseen blow. The long line in the trenches
moved and twisted restlessly.

In front of the trenches were other regiments, out ahead in the woods,
unseen, somewhere toward that place whence came the steadiest jarring
of artillery and the loudest rattling of the lesser arms. It was very
hard to lie and listen, to imagine, to suspect, to dread. For hours
the game went on, the reserves at the trenches hearing now distinctly
and now faintly the tumult of the lines, now receding, now coming on.
But the volume of the tumult, and its separation into a thousand