as were
found in the haversacks. They made their fires on the hillside and
crouched around them, nodding uneasily, trying to sleep with faces
scorched by the flame and freezing backs. They put their feet in the
sodden shoes to the fire, and the poor, worn-out leather fell into yet
greater holes. There was some conjecture as to how far the thermometer
stood below zero. Some put it at forty, but the more conservative
declared for twenty. It was impossible to sleep, and every one was
hungry, and the tobacco was all out. _What were they doing at home, by
the fire, after supper, with the children playing about?_

At dawn the bugles blew. Stiff and sore, racked with pains and aches,
coughing, limping, savagely hungry, the men rose. Time was to come when
even a dawn like this would be met by the Confederate soldier with
whimsical cheer, with greetings as to an oft-encountered friend, with a
courage quaint, pathetic, and divinely high--but the time was not yet.
The men swore and groaned. The haversacks were quite empty; there would
be no breakfast until the wagons were caught up with at Unger's. The
drivers went down the hillside for the horses. When they came to the
strength that had drawn the guns and looked, there was a moment's
silence. Hetterich the blacksmith was with the party, and Hetterich
wept. "If I was God, I wouldn't have it--I wouldn't have a horse treated
so! Just look at Flora--just look at her knees! Ah, the poor brute!" So
frequent had been the falls of the day before, so often had the animals
been cut by the carriages coming upon them, that many were scarred in a
dreadful fashion. The knees of Flora had been badly cut, and what
Hetterich pointed at were long red icicles hanging from the wounds.

At Unger's the evening before, in a narrow valley between the silver
hills, the infantry stacked arms, broke ranks, and listened with sullen
brows to two pieces of news. At Hanging Rock, between Unger's and
Romney, the advance, composed of a regiment of militia and a section of
artillery, had come into touch with the enemy. The militia had broken,
the two guns had been lost. "Fool Tom Jackson" was reported to have
said, "Good! good!" and lifted that right hand of his to the sky. The
other tidings were to the effect that the troops would rest at Unger's
for three days, to the end, chiefly, that the horses might be
rough-shod. Rest--delicious sound! But Unger's! To the east the
unutterably bleak hills over which they h