The waters of the grim river curled away in a smile from the ends of
the great boats, and slid swiftly beneath the planking. The dark,
riddled walls of the town upreared before the troops, and from a region
hidden by these hammered and tumbled houses came incessantly the yells
and firings of a prolonged and close skirmish.

When Dan had called his brother a fool, his voice had been so decisive,
so brightly assured, that many men had laughed, considering it to be
great humour under the circumstances. The incident happened to rankle
deep in Billie. It was not any strange thing that his brother had called
him a fool. In fact, he often called him a fool with exactly the same
amount of cheerful and prompt conviction, and before large audiences,
too. Billie wondered in his own mind why he took such profound offence
in this case; but, at any rate, as he slid down the bank and on to the
bridge with his regiment, he was searching his knowledge for something
that would pierce Dan's blithesome spirit. But he could contrive nothing
at this time, and his impotency made the glance which he was once able
to give his brother still more malignant.

The guns far and near were roaring a fearful and grand introduction for
this column which was marching upon the stage of death. Billie felt it,
but only in a numb way. His heart was cased in that curious dissonant
metal which covers a man's emotions at such times. The terrible voices
from the hills told him that in this wide conflict his life was an
insignificant fact, and that his death would be an insignificant fact.
They portended the whirlwind to which he would be as necessary as a
butterfly's waved wing. The solemnity, the sadness of it came near
enough to make him wonder why he was neither solemn nor sad. When his
mind vaguely adjusted events according to their importance to him, it