nt either, chaplain!
With all respect to you, you're a non-combatant. And that Valley man
over there--he doesn't count either. He belongs to the Stonewall
Brigade. He's one of Major-General T. J. Jackson's pet lambs. They're
school-teachers' favourites. All they've got to do is to cheer for their
master.--Hip, hip, hooray! Here's Old Jack with his hand lifted and his
old cap pulled low, and his sabre carried _oblikely_, and his 'God has
been very good to us to-day, men!' Yaaah--Look out! What are you about?"

The cadet and the Valley man threw themselves across the straw, upon the
Georgian. Corbin Wood crawled over and separated them. "Boys, boys!
You're quarrelling just because you're sick and tired and cold and
fretful! Try to be good children. I predict there'll come a day when
we'll _all_ cheer like mad--our friend from Georgia, too--all cheer like
mad when General Jackson goes by, leading us to victory! Be good now. I
was at the circus once, when I was a little boy, when the animals got to
fighting--"

The way over Bear Garden was steep, the road a mere track among
boulders. There were many fallen trees. In places they lay across the
road, abatis thrown there by the storm to be removed by half-frozen
hands while the horses stood and whinnied. The winter day was failing
when Stonewall Jackson, Ashby, and a portion of the cavalry with the
small infantry advance, came down by precipitous paths into Bloomery
Gap. Here, in a dim hollow and pass of the mountains, beside a shallow,
frozen creek, they bivouacked.

From the other side of Bear Garden, General Loring again sent Stafford
forward with a statement, couched in terms of courtesy three-piled and
icy. The aide--a favourite with his general--had ventured to demur. "I
don't think General Jackson likes me, sir. Would not some other--"
Loring, the Old Blizzard of two years later--had sworn. "Damn you,
Maury, whom does he like? Not any one out of the Stonewall Brigade!
You've got a limberer wit than most, and he can't make you cower--by the
Lord, I've seen him make others do it! You go ahead, and when you're
there talk indigo Presbyterian!"

"There" was a space of trampled snow underneath a giant pine. A picket
on the eastern side of the stream pointed it out, three hundred yards
away, a dark sentinel towering above the forest. "He's thar. His staff's
this side, by the pawpaw bushes." Stafford crossed the stream, shallow
and filled with floating ice, climbed the shel