of every
kind, wines, spirits, cigars--oh, everything! The artillery groaned and
swore, but obeyed orders. Leaving Capua behind, it strained along the
Hancock road in the wake of the pursuing cavalry and the fleeing
Federals.

The main body of the latter, well in advance and with no exhausting
march behind them to weaken horse and man, reached the Potomac by the
Hancock road at a point where they had boats moored, and got clean away,
joining Lander on the Maryland shore. The lesser number, making for Sir
John's Run and the Big Cacapon and followed by some companies of
Ashby's, did not so quickly escape. The Confederate advance came,
artillery, horse, and skirmishers, upon the river bank at sunset. All
around were great rolling hills, quite bare of trees and covered with
snow, over which the setting sun threw a crimson tinge. Below was the
river, hoarsely murmuring, and immediately upon the other side, the
clustering Maryland village, with a church spire tall and tapering
against the northern sky. About the village was another village of
tents, and upon a hilltop frowned a line of guns. Dusk as it was, the
Confederate batteries unlimbered, and there opened an artillery duel,
shells screaming from north to south and south to north across the river
yet stained with the sunset glow.

That night the infantry remained at Bath, warmed and comforted by the
captured stores. They came like a gift from the gods, and as is usual
with that gift they disappeared in a twinkling. In the afternoon the
three arms met on the river bank. The sky was again a level grey; it was
evident that a snowstorm was brewing. There was not a house; except for
the fringe along the water's edge there was hardly a tree. The hills
were all bare. The snow was packed so hard and so mingled with ice that
when, in the cannonading, the Federal missiles struck and tore it up the
fragments were as keen and troublesome, almost, as splinters of shell.
There was no shelter, little wood for burning. The men gazed about them
with a frown of uneasiness. The storm set in with a whirl of snow and
with a wind that raved like a madman and broke the spectral white arms
of the sycamores by the river. In a short time there was a shifting,
wonderful, numbing veil streaming silent from the grey heavens. It was
almost a relief when dark came and wrapped the great, lonely, ghostly
countryside. This night the men disregarded the taboo and burned every
available fence rail.

In