familiar surroundings is unable to determine his exact place and part
in the scheme of things. It is so, perhaps, that we shall act when,
risen from the dead, we await the call to judgment.

A hundred yards away was a straight road, showing white in the
moonlight. Endeavoring to orient himself, as a surveyor or navigator
might say, the man moved his eyes slowly along its visible length and
at a distance of a quarter-mile to the south of his station saw, dim
and gray in the haze, a group of horsemen riding to the north.
Behind them were men afoot, marching in column, with dimly gleaming
rifles aslant above their shoulders. They moved slowly and in
silence. Another group of horsemen, another regiment of infantry,
another and another--all in unceasing motion toward the man's point
of view, past it, and beyond. A battery of artillery followed, the
cannoneers riding with folded arms on limber and caisson. And still
the interminable procession came out of the obscurity to south and
passed into the obscurity to north, with never a sound of voice, nor
hoof, nor wheel.

The man could not rightly understand: he thought himself deaf; said
so, and heard his own voice, although it had an unfamiliar quality
that almost alarmed him; it disappointed his ear's expectancy in the
matter of timbre and resonance. But he was not deaf, and that for
the moment sufficed.

Then he remembered that there are natural phenomena to which some one
has given the name "acoustic shadows." If you stand in an acoustic
shadow there is one direction from which you will hear nothing. At
the battle of Gaines's Mill, one of the fiercest conflicts of the
Civil War, with a hundred guns in play, spectators a mile and a half