The old Colonel having completed his arrangements sat down by his camp-fire
with paper and pencil, and began to write; and as the men finished their work
they gathered about in groups, at first around their camp-fires,
but shortly strolled over to where the guns still stood at the breastwork,
black and vague in the darkness. Soon they were all assembled about the guns.
One after another they visited, closing around it and handling it from
muzzle to trail as a man might a horse to try its sinew and bone, or a child
to feel its fineness and warmth. They were for the most part silent,
and when any sound came through the dusk from them to the officers at
their fire, it was murmurous and fitful as of men speaking low and brokenly.
There was no sound of the noisy controversy which was generally heard,
the give-and-take of the camp-fire, the firing backwards and forwards
that went on on the march; if a compliment was paid a gun
by one of its special detachment, it was accepted by the others;
in fact, those who had generally run it down now seemed most anxious
to accord the piece praise. Presently a small number of the men
returned to a camp-fire, and, building it up, seated themselves about it,
gathering closer and closer together until they were in a little knot.
One of them appeared to be writing, while two or three took up
flaming chunks from the fire and held them as torches for him to see by.
In time the entire company assembled about them, standing in
respectful silence, broken only occasionally by a reply from one or another
to some question from the scribe. After a little there was a sound
of a roll-call, and reading and a short colloquy followed, and then two men,
one with a paper in his hand, approached the fire beside which the officers
sat still engaged.

"What is it, Harris?" said the Colonel to the man with the paper, who bore
remnants of the chevrons of a sergeant on his stained and faded jacket.