given over grey glass.

With the closing in of the ghostly day, in a stretch of fields beside a
frozen stream, the column halted. There were no tents, and there was
scarcely anything to eat. One of the fields was covered by stacked corn,
and it was discovered that the ear had been left. In the driving sleet
the men tore apart the shocks and with numbed fingers stripped from the
grain the sere, rough, and icy husks. They and the horses ate the yellow
corn. All night, stupid with misery, the soldiers dozed and muttered
beside the wretched fires. One, a lawyer's clerk, cried like a child,
with his hands scored till they bled by the frozen corn husks. Down the
stream stood a deserted sawmill, and here the Rockbridge men found
planks with which they made for themselves little pens. The sleet
sounded for hours on the boards that served for roof, but at last it
died away. The exhausted army slept, but when in the grey dawn it
stirred and rose to the wailing of the bugles, it threw off a weight of
snow. All the world was white again beneath a livid sky.

This day they made four miles. The grey trees were draped with ice, the
grey zigzag of the fences was gliding ice under the hands that caught at
it, the hands of the sick and weak. Motion resolved itself into a Dead
March; few notes and slow, with rests. The army moved and halted, moved
and halted with a weird stateliness. Couriers came back from the man
riding ahead, cadet cap drawn over eyes that saw only what a giant and
iron race might do under a giant and iron dictatorship. General Jackson
says, "Press Forward!" General Jackson says, "Press Forward, men!"

They did not reach Bath that night. They lay down and slept behind a
screen of hills and awoke in an amethyst dawn to a sky of promise. The
light, streaming from the east, made glorious the ice-laden trees and
the far and dazzling wastes of snow. The sunshine cheered the troops.
Bath was just ahead--Bath and the Yankees! The 1st Tennessee and the
48th Virginia suddenly swung from the main road, and moved across the
fields to the ridges overlooking the town. Apparently they had gathered
their strength into a ball, for they went with energy, double-quickening
over the snow. The afternoon before Carson and Meems had been detached,
disappearing to the right. A rumour ran through the ranks. This force
would be now on the other side of Bath. "It's like a cup, all of us on
the rim, and the Yanks at the bottom. If Carson can h