"The Souf," and so, for the time, shipwrecked his testimony. But it was
recalled six months afterwards. It was then that a pleasant spring day
brought madness and enthusiasm to a majority of Pineville, and bated
breath and awe to a few, and it was known with the tidings that the
South had appealed to arms, that among those who had first responded to
the call was Joseph Corbin, an alleged "Union man," who had, however,
volunteered to take that place in her ranks which might HAVE BEEN FILLED
BY THE MAN HE HAD KILLED. And then people forgot all about him.

*****

A year passed. It was the same place; the old familiar outlines of home
and garden and landscape. But seen now, in the choking breathlessness of
haste, in the fitful changing flashes of life and motion around it,
in intervals of sharp suspense or dazed bewilderment, it seemed to be
recognized no longer. Men who had known it all their lives, hurrying to
the front in compact masses, scurrying to the rear in straggling line,
or opening their ranks to let artillery gallop by, stared at it vaguely,
and clattered or scrambled on again. The smoke of a masked battery
in the woods struggled and writhed to free itself from the clinging
treetops behind it, and sank back into a gray encompassing cloud. The
dust thrown up by a column of passing horse poured over the wall in one
long wave, and whitened the garden with its ashes. Throughout the
dim empty house one no longer heard the sound of cannon, only a dull
intermittent concussion was felt, silently bringing flakes of plaster
from the walls, or sliding fragments of glass from the shattered
windows. A shell, lifted from the ominous distance, hung uncertain in
the air and then descended swiftly through the roof; the whole house
dilated with flame for an instant, smoke rolled slowly from the windows,
and even the desolate chimneys started into a hideous mockery of life,