ing day.
The men climbed a bank of red earth, and struck across a great
cornfield. They stumbled over the furrows, they broke down the stalks,
they tore aside the intertwining small, blue morning-glories. Wet with
the dew of the field, they left it and dipped again into woods. The
shade did not hold; now they were traversing an immense and wasted
stretch where the dewberry caught at their ankles and the sun had an
unchecked sway. Ahead the firing grew louder. _Get on, men, get on!_

Allan Gold, hurrying with his hurrying world, found in life this July
morning something he had not found before. Apparently there were cracks
in the firmament through which streamed a dazzling light, an
invigorating air. After all, there was something wide, it seemed, in
war, something sweet. It was bright and hot--they were going, clean and
childlike, to help their fellows at the bridge. When, near at hand, a
bugle blew, high as a lark above the stress, he followed the sound with
a clear delight. He felt no fatigue, and he had never seen the sky so
blue, the woods so green. Chance brought him for a moment in line with
his captain. "Well, Allan?"

"I seem to have waked up," said Allan, then, very soberly. "I am going
to like this thing."

Cleave laughed. "You haven't the air of a Norse sea king for nothing!"
They dipped into a bare, red gully, scrambled up the opposite bank, and
fought again with the dewberry vines. "When the battle's over you're to
report to General Jackson. Say that I sent you--that you're the man he
asked for this morning."

The entangling vines abruptly gave up the fight. A soft hillside of
pasturage succeeded, down which the men ran like schoolboys. A gray
zigzag of rail fence, a little plashy stream, another hillside, and at
the top, planted against a horizon of haze and sound, a courier,
hatless, upon a reeking horse. "General Jackson?"

"Yes, sir."

"McDowell has crossed at Sudley Ford. The attack on the Stone Bridge is
a feint. Colonel Evans has left four companies there, and with the 4th
South Carolina and the Louisiana Tigers is getting into position across
Young's Branch, upon the Mathews Hill. Colonel Evans's compliments, and
he says for God's sake to come on!"

"Very good, sir. General Jackson's compliments, and I am coming."

The courier turned, spurred his horse, and was gone. Jackson rode down
the column. "You're doing well, men, but you've got to do better.
Colonel Evans says for God's sake to com