of the
good ammunition they could throw away down there, and of his empty
limber-chests. It was necessary to be on the alert, however; the guns
were run back into their old places, and the horses picketed once more
back among the trees. Meantime he sent another messenger back, this time
a courier, for he had but one commissioned officer left, and the picket
below was strengthened.

The morning passed and no one came; the day wore on and still no advance
was made by the force below. It was suggested that the enemy had left;
he had, at least, gotten enough of that battery. A reconnoissance,
however, showed that he was still encamped at the foot of the mountain.
It was conjectured that he was trying to find a way around to take them
in the rear, or to cross the ridge by the footpath. Preparation was
made to guard more closely the mountain-path across the spur, and a
detachment was sent up to strengthen the picket there. The waiting told
on the men and they grew bored and restless. They gathered about the
guns in groups and talked; talked of each piece some, but not with the
old spirit and vim; the loneliness of the mountain seemed to oppress
them; the mountains stretching up so brown and gray on one side of
them, and so brown and gray on the other, with their bare, dark forests
soughing from time to time as the wind swept up the pass. The minds of
the men seemed to go back to the time when they were not so alone, but
were part of a great and busy army, and some of them fell to talking of
the past, and the battles they had figured in, and of the comrades they
had lost. They told them off in a slow and colorless way, as if it were
all part of the past as much as the dead they named. One hundred and
nineteen times they had been in action. Only seventeen men were left of
the eighty odd who had first enlisted in the battery, and of these four
were at home crippled for life. Two of the oldest men had been among the
half-dozen who had fallen in the skirmish just the day before. It
looked tolerably hard to be killed that way after passing for four
years through such battles as they had been in; and both had wives and
children at home, too, and not a cent to leave them to their names. They
agreed calmly that they'd have to "sort of look after them a little" if
they ever got home. These were some of the things they talked about
as they pulled their old worn coats about them, stuffed their thin,
weather-stained hands in their ragged