appeared that the uppermost thing was the fact that upon the eve of
battle, and before many comrades, his brother had called him a fool.

Dan was in a particularly happy mood. "Hurray! Look at 'em shoot," he
said, when the long witches' croon of the shells came into the air. It
enraged Billie when he felt the little thorn in him, and saw at the same
time that his brother had completely forgotten it.

The column went from the bridge into more mud. At this southern end
there was a chaos of hoarse directions and commands. Darkness was coming
upon the earth, and regiments were being hurried up the slippery bank.
As Billie floundered in the black mud, amid the swearing, sliding crowd,
he suddenly resolved that, in the absence of other means of hurting Dan,
he would avoid looking at him, refrain from speaking to him, pay
absolutely no heed to his existence; and this done skilfully would, he
imagined, soon reduce his brother to a poignant sensitiveness.

At the top of the bank the column again halted and rearranged itself,
as a man after a climb rearranges his clothing. Presently the great
steel-backed brigade, an infinitely graceful thing in the rhythm and
ease of its veteran movement, swung up a little narrow, slanting street.

Evening had come so swiftly that the fighting on the remote borders of
the town was indicated by thin flashes of flame. Some building was on
fire, and its reflection upon the clouds was an oval of delicate pink.




II