e on!"

That hilltop crossed at a run, they plunged again into the trough of
those low waves. The First Brigade had proved its mettle, but here it
began to lose. Men gasped, wavered, fell out of line and were left
behind. In Virginia the July sunshine is no bagatelle. It beat hard
to-day, and to many in these ranks there was in this July Sunday an
awful strangeness. At home--ah, at home!--crushed ice and cooling fans,
a pleasant and shady ride to a pleasant, shady church, a little dozing
through a comfortable sermon, then friends and crops and politics in the
twilight dells of an old churchyard, then home, and dinner, and wide
porches--Ah, that was the way, that was the way. _Close up, there!
Don't straggle, men, don't straggle!_

They were out now upon another high field, carpeted with yellowing
sedge, dotted over with young pines. The 65th headed the column.
Lieutenant Coffin of Company A was a busy officer, active as a
jumping-jack, half liked and half distasted by the men. The need of some
breathing time, however slight, was now so imperative that at a stake
and rider fence, overgrown with creepers, a five minutes' halt was
ordered. The fence ran at right angles, and all along the column the men
dropped upon the ground, in the shadow of the vines. Coffin threw
himself down by the Thunder Run men. "Billy Maydew!"

"Yaas, sir."

"What have you got that stick tied to your gun for? Throw it away! I
should think you'd find that old flintlock heavy enough without
shouldering a sapling besides!"

Billy regarded with large blue eyes his staff for a young Hercules.
"'Tain't a mite in my way, lieutenant. I air a-goin' to make a notch on
it for every Yank I kill. When we get back to Thunder Run I air a-goin'
to hang it over the fireplace. I reckon it air a-goin' to look right
interestin'. Pap, he has a saplin' marked for b'ar an' wolves, an'
gran'pap he has one his pap marked for Indians--"

"Throw it away!" said Coffin sharply. "It isn't regular. Do as I tell
you."

Billy stared. "But I don't want to. It air my stick, an' I air a-goin'
to hang it over the fireplace--"

The heat, the sound in front, all things, made Coffin fretful. He rose
from the fence corner. "Throw that stick away, or I'll put you in the
guardhouse! This ain't Thunder Run--and you men have got to learn a
thing or two! Come now!"

"I won't," said Billy. "An' if 't were Thunder Run, you wouldn't dar'--"

Allan Gold drew himself over the grass an