"If you please, sir, the guns are all loaded," said the sergeant;
"in and about our last charge, too; and we'd like to fire 'em off once more,
jist for old times' sake to remember 'em by, if you don't think no harm
could come of it?"

The Colonel reflected a moment and said it might be done;
they might fire each gun separately as they rolled it over,
or might get all ready and fire together, and then roll them over,
whichever they wished. This was satisfactory.

The men were then ordered to prepare to march immediately, and withdrew for
the purpose. The pickets were called in. In a short time they were ready,
horses and all, just as they would have been to march ordinarily,
except that the wagons and caissons were packed over in one corner by the camp
with the harness hung on poles beside them, and the guns stood
in their old places at the breastwork ready to defend the pass.
The embers of the sinking camp-fires threw a faint light on them
standing so still and silent. The old Colonel took his place,
and at a command from him in a somewhat low voice, the men, except a detail
left to hold the horses, moved into company-front facing the guns.
Not a word was spoken, except the words of command. At the order
each detachment went to its gun; the guns were run back and the men
with their own hands ran them up on the edge of the perpendicular bluff
above the river, where, sheer below, its waters washed its base,
as if to face an enemy on the black mountain the other side. The pieces
stood ranged in the order in which they had so often stood in battle,
and the gray, thin fog rising slowly and silently from the river
deep down between the cliffs, and wreathing the mountain-side above,
might have been the smoke from some unearthly battle fought in the dim pass