of millions of sweet-breathing, velvety pansies, nestling under huge
shadowy rocks, by acres of white puccoon flowers, each as lovely
as the lily that grows by cool Siloam's shady rill--all scattered
there with Nature's reckless profusion, where no eye saw them from
year to year save those of the infrequent hunter, those of the
thousands of gaily-plumaged birds that sang and screamed through the
branches of the trees above, and those of the hideous rattlesnakes
that crawled and hissed in the crevices of the shelving rocks.

At last the regiment halted under the grateful shadows of the
broad-topped oaks and chestnuts. A patriarchal pheasant, drumming
on a log near by some uxorious communication to his brooding mate,
distended his round eyes in amazement at the strange irruption of
men and horses, and then whirred away in a transport of fear. A
crimson crested woodpecker ceased his ominous tapping, and flew
boldly to a neighboring branch, where he could inspect the new
arrival to good advantage and determine his character.

The men threw themselves down for a moment's rest, on the springing
moss that covered the whole mountain side. A hum of comment
and conversation arose. Jake Alspaugh began to think that there
was not likely to be any fight after all, and his spirits rose
proportionately. Abe Bolton growled that the cowardly officers
had no doubt deliberately misled the regiment, that a fight might
be avoided. Kent Edwards saw a nodding May-apple flower--as fair
as a calla and as odorous as a pink--at a little distance, and
hastened to pick it. He came back with it in the muzzle of his
gun, and his hands full of violets.

A thick-bodied rattlesnake crawled slowly and clumsily out from the