er slowly passing eastward, gun-carriage, horses,
men, in strange silhouette against the level and dazzling white disk of
the rising sun. Truly, the slow cortege seemed moving straight into the
flaming gates of heaven, the while their solemn music throbbed and
throbbed with the double drum-beat at the finish of each line. The tune
was called "Funeral Thoughts." They changed to "Roslyn Castle" as they
crossed the bridge; yet an hour had scarce passed when I heard their
volley-firing not very far away, and back they came, the Fife-Major
leading, drums, fifes, and light-infantry horns gaily sounding "The
Pioneer," and the men swinging back briskly to fall in with the Church
details, now marching in from every direction to the admonitory timing
of a single drum-beat.

The music had awakened Elsin, and presently she came a-tapping at my
door, barefoot, her cardinal tightly wrapped around her, hair tumbled,
drowsily rubbing her heavy lids.

"Good morning, Carus," she said sleepily. "I should dearly like to hear
a good, strong sermon on damnation to-day--being sensible of my present
state of sin, and of yours. Do they preach hell-fire in Rebeldom?"

"The landlord says that Hazen's mixed brigade and other troops go to
service in the hay-field above the bridge," I answered, laughing.
"Shall we ride thither?"

She nodded, yawning, then pulling her foot-mantle closer about her
shoulders, pattered back into her chamber, and I went below and ordered
our horses saddled, and breakfast to be served us as soon as might be.

And so it happened that, ere the robins had done caroling their morning
songs, and the far, sweet anthems of the hermit-birds still rang in
dewy woodlands, Elsin and I dismounted in Granger's hay-field just as
the troops marched up in a long, dense column, the massed music of many
regiments ahead, but only a single drum timing the steady tread.

All was done in perfect decorum and order. A hay-wagon was the pulpit;
around it the drummers piled their drums, tier rising on tier; the
ensigns draped the national colors over the humble platform, setting
regimental and state standards at the corners; and I noted there some
curious flags, one borne by a Massachusetts battalion, white, with a
green tree on it; another, a yellow naval flag with a coiled
rattlesnake; another, carried by a company of riflemen, on which was
this design:

1776.
XI VIRGINIA REG'T,

and I knew that I was looking upon th