hrough a ravine with a
sheer descent on the right to the frozen creek below. To the left,
covering the mountain-side, were masses of evergreen kalmia, and above
them tall and leafless trees in whose branches the wind made a grating
sound. The sleet was falling again--a veil of sleet. The two waiting for
the ambulance looked down upon the grey soldiers, grey, weary, and bent
before the wind. "Who would ever have thought," said the chaplain,
"that Dante took an idea from Virginia in the middle of the nineteenth
century? I remember things being so happy and comfortable--but it must
have been long ago. Yes, my people, long ago." Dropping the bridle, he
raised his arm in a gesture usual with him in the pulpit. In the fading
light there was about him an illusion of black and white; he moved his
arm as though it were clad in the sleeve of a surplice. "I am not often
denunciatory," he said, "but I denounce this weary going to and fro,
this turning like a dervish, this finding that every straight line is
but a fraction of a circle, this squirrel cage with the greenwood never
reached, this interminable drama, this dance of midges,--

Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the selfsame spot,
And much of Madness and more of Sin
And Horror the soul of the plot--

Is it not wonderful, the gold light on the mountains?"

At last the ambulance appeared--a good one, captured at Manassas. The
chaplain, still talking, was persuaded stiffly to dismount, to give
Pluto's bridle into Stafford's hand, and to enter. There were other
occupants, two rows of them. Stafford saw his old friend laid in a
corner, on a wisp of straw; then, finding Fontaine in the ranks, gave
over the grey, and joined the staff creeping, creeping on tired horses
through the sleet.

Cavalry and infantry and wagon train wound at the close of day over a
vast bare hilltop toward Unger's Store where, it was known, would be the
bivouac. The artillery in the rear found it impossible to finish out the
march. Two miles from Unger's the halt was ordered. It was full dark;
neither man nor brute could stumble farther. All came to a stand high up
on the wind-swept hill. The guns were left in the road, the horses led
down the slope and picketted in the lee of a poor stable, placed there,
it seemed, by some pitying chance. In the stable there was even found
some hay and corn. The men had no supper, or only such crumbs