What had been in the cool gray of that summer morning a dewy country
lane, marked only by a few wagon tracks that never encroached upon its
grassy border, and indented only by the faint footprints of a crossing
fox or coon, was now, before high noon, already crushed, beaten down,
and trampled out of all semblance of its former graciousness. The heavy
springless jolt of gun-carriage and caisson had cut deeply through the
middle track; the hoofs of crowding cavalry had struck down and shredded
the wayside vines and bushes to bury them under a cloud of following
dust, and the short, plunging double-quick of infantry had trodden out
this hideous ruin into one dusty level chaos. Along that rudely widened
highway useless muskets, torn accoutrements, knapsacks, caps, and
articles of clothing were scattered, with here and there the larger
wrecks of broken-down wagons, roughly thrown aside into the ditch to
make way for the living current. For two hours the greater part of
an army corps had passed and repassed that way, but, coming or going,
always with faces turned eagerly towards an open slope on the right
which ran parallel to the lane. And yet nothing was to be seen there.
For two hours a gray and bluish cloud, rent and shaken with explosion
after explosion, but always closing and thickening after each discharge,
was all that had met their eyes. Nevertheless, into this ominous cloud
solid moving masses of men in gray or blue had that morning melted away,
or emerged from it only as scattered fragments that crept, crawled,
ran, or clung together in groups, to be followed, and overtaken in the
rolling vapor.

But for the last half hour the desolated track had stretched empty and
deserted. While there was no cessation of the rattling, crackling, and
detonations on the fateful slope beyond, it had still been silent. Once
or twice it had been crossed by timid, hurrying wings, and frightened
and hesitating little feet, or later by skulkers and stragglers from