h a downpour. All day long it rained, and in the rain we buried our
comrades. There were two brothers, Holmes and Tucker Conrad, boys from
the University. Holmes was shot through the heart, just on the edge of a
ravine on the Henry Hill. Tucker, across the ravine, saw him fall. He
was down one side and up the other before a man could draw breath. He
lifted Holmes, and as he did so, he, too, was killed. We found them
lying in each other's arms, Holmes smiling, and we buried them so. We
buried many friends and comrades and kindred--we were all more or less
akin--and perhaps, being young to war, that solemn battlefield loomed to
us so large that it obstructed the view of the routed invasion now
across the Potomac, out of Virginia. We held then and we hold still,
that our generals that day were sagacious and brave, and we think
history may take their word for it that any effective pursuit, looking
to the crossing of the Potomac, was a military impossibility. It is true
that Stonewall Jackson, as history reminds us, was heard to exclaim
while the surgeon was dressing his hand, 'Give me ten thousand fresh
troops, and I will be in Washington to-morrow!' But there were not the
ten thousand troops to give."

CHAPTER IX

WINCHESTER

The December afternoon was drawing to a quiet close. The season had
proved extraordinarily mild--it seemed Indian summer still rather than
only a fortnight from Christmas. Farming folk prophesied a cold January,
while the neighbourhood negroes held that the unusual warmth proceeded
from the comet which blazed this year in the skies. An old woman whom
the children called a witch sat in the sun on her doorstep, and shook
her head at every passer-by. "A green Christmas makes a fat
graveyard.--Down, pussy, down, down!--A green Christmas makes a fat
graveyard. Did ye hear the firing yesterday?"

An amethyst haze filled the valley town of Winchester. Ordinarily, in
weather such as this, the wide streets had a dream quality and the
gardens where the chrysanthemums yet lingered and the brick sidewalks
all strewn with russet leaves, and the faint smell of wood smoke, and
the old gilt of the sunshine, all carried back as to some vanished song
or story, sweet while it lasted. But if this was true once of
Winchester, and might be true again, it was hardly true of to-day, of
Winchester in December 1861; of Winchester with Major-General T. J.
Jackson, commanding the Department of the Valley, quartered i