g beneath. Old love songs
floated through the soft and dreamy air; there was a sense of angelic
beings in the unlit rooms above, even of the flutter of their wings.
Then, at the music's dying fall, flowers were thrown; there seemed to
descend a breath, a whisper, "Adieu, heroes--adored, adored heroes!" A
scramble for the flowers, then out at the gate and on to the next house,
and so _da capo_.

Dawn, though the stars were yet shining, began to make itself felt. A
coldness was in the air, a mist arose from the river, there came a
sensation of arrest, of somewhere an icy finger upon the pulse of life.

Maxwelton's braes are bonnie,
Where early fa's the dew,
And 't was there that Annie Laurie
Gie'd me her promise true,--

They were singing now before an old brick house in the lower street.
There were syringas in bloom in the yard. A faint light was rising in
the east, the stars were fading.

Gie'd me her promise true
Which ne'er forgot shall be--

Suddenly, from High Street, wrapped in mist, a bugle rang out. The
order--the order--the order to the front! It called again, sounding the
assembly. _Fall in, men, fall in!_

At sunrise Richard Cleave's company went away. There was a dense crowd
in the misty street, weeping, cheering. An old minister, standing beside
the captain, lifted his arms--the men uncovered, the prayer was said,
the blessing given. Again the bugle blew, the women cried farewell. The
band played "Virginia," the flag streamed wide in the morning wind.
Good-bye, good-bye, and again good-bye! _Attention! Take arms! Shoulder
arms! Right face!_ FORWARD, MARCH!

CHAPTER VI

BY ASHBY'S GAP

The 65th Virginia Infantry, Colonel Valentine Brooke, was encamped to
the north of Winchester in the Valley of Virginia, in a meadow through
which ran a stream, and upon a hillside beneath a hundred chestnut
trees, covered with white tassels of bloom. To its right lay the 2d, the
4th, the 5th, the 27th, and the 33d Virginia, forming with the 65th the
First Brigade, General T. J. Jackson. The battery attached--the
Rockbridge Artillery--occupied an adjacent apple orchard. To the left,
in other July meadows and over other chestnut-shaded hills, were spread
the brigades of Bee, Bartow, and Elzey. Somewhere in the distance,
behind the screen of haze, were Stuart and his cavalry. Across the
stream a brick farmhou