hat had been, brushed like
invisible wings the thoughts of the men in the swift columns that came
up from the river.

In the darkness a loud and endless humming arose from the great blue
crowds bivouacked in the streets. From time to time a sharp spatter of
firing from far picket lines entered this bass chorus. The smell from
the smouldering ruins floated on the cold night breeze.

Dan, seated ruefully upon the doorstep of a shot-pierced house, was
proclaiming the campaign badly managed. Orders had been issued
forbidding camp-fires.

Suddenly he ceased his oration, and scanning the group of his comrades,
said: "Where's Billie? Do you know?"

"Gone on picket."

"Get out! Has he?" said Dan. "No business to go on picket. Why don't
some of them other corporals take their turn?"

A bearded private was smoking his pipe of confiscated tobacco, seated
comfortably upon a horse-hair trunk which he had dragged from the house.
He observed: "_Was_ his turn."

"No such thing," cried Dan. He and the man on the horse-hair trunk held
discussion in which Dan stoutly maintained that if his brother had been
sent on picket it was an injustice. He ceased his argument when another
soldier, upon whose arms could faintly be seen the two stripes of a
corporal, entered the circle. "Humph," said Dan, "where you been?"

The corporal made no answer. Presently Dan said: "Billie, where you
been?"

His brother did not seem to hear these inquiries. He glanced at the
house which towered above them, and remarked casually to the man on the
horse-hair trunk: "Funny, ain't it? After the pelting this town got,
you'd think there wouldn't be one brick left on another."

"Oh," said Dan, glowering at his brother's back. "Getting mighty smart,
ain't you?"

The absence of camp-fires allowed the evening to make apparent its
quality of faint silver light in which the blue clothes of the throng
became black, and the faces became white expanses, void of expression.
There was considerable excitement a short distance from the group around
the doorstep. A soldier had chanced upon a hoop-skirt, and arrayed in it
he was performing a dance amid the applause of his companions. Billie
and a greater part of the men immediately poured over there to witness
the exhibition.

"What's the matter with Billie?" demanded Dan of the man upon the
horse-hair trunk.

"How do I know?" rejoined the other in mild resentment. He arose and
walked away. When he returned he said