with the rebellion, it was
impossible to even catch sight of any but soldiers. Pennsylvania Avenue,
when they reached it, was a billowy channel of impalpable powder. But at
the Long Bridge the breeze from the wide channel of the river cleared
the clouds of dust, and the men, catching glimpses of each other, broke
into jocose banter. On the bridge they looked eagerly down the river,
where the low roofs of Alexandria were visible, and upward on the
Virginia shore where the gleaming walls of Arlington recalled to Jack
far different times and scenes.

"Now we're in Jeff Davis's land," Barney called out from one of the rear
files, as the company reached midway in the bridge.

"Not by a long shot," Nick Marsh cried. "Davis's land begins and ends
within cannon-shot of himself. He is like the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen--he
has to beg his neighbor's permission to hold battalion drill."

"He isn't so polite as the duke; he takes it without asking," Barney
retorts.

"But now we are on the 'sacred soil,'" Jack cries, as the company
debouched from the bridge up the steep, narrow road that seemed to be
taking them to Arlington. In spite of the burning heat and the
exhaustion of the three hours' march, the scene was, or rather the
imagination of the men, invested each step with a sort of awe. They were
at last in the enemy's territory. It had been held by the Union forces,
only by dint of large numbers and strong fortifications. There wasn't a
man in the company that didn't resent the fact, constantly obtruding
itself on the ranks as they marched eagerly onward by every knoll, every
bush in the landscape, that Union soldiers had been there before them!
that their devouring eyes were not the first to mark these
historic spots.

Tired as they were and burdensome as the heavy knapsacks and still
heavier ammunition had become, they heard an aide give the order to
bivouac with chagrin! They so longed to put undebatable ground behind
them and really be where the distant coppice might be a curtain to the
enemy! The Caribees marked with indignant surprise that, when they had
turned into a field about seven o'clock, the long line following them
pushed onward until far into the night, and they envied the contiguity
this would give the lucky laggards to first see and engage the enemy!
But they turned-to very merrily, in this first night of real soldiering.
They were "in the field." All the parade part of military life was now
relaxed. The hot