e moon was high. Far-flung, beautiful odours
filled the air; the red ploughed earth sent its share, the flowering
fruit trees theirs, the flowers in the wood, the mint by the stream. A
light wind swung them as from a censer; the moved air touched the young
man's forehead. He took off his hat; he rode rapidly with head held
high. He rode for hours, Dundee taking the way with even power, a
magnificently silent friend. Behind, on an iron grey, came the orderly.
Riding thus together, away from organization and discipline, the
relations between the two men, officer and private, were perfectly
democratic. From Rude's Hill across the Massanuttons and from Swift Run
Gap to Charlottesville they had been simply comrades and fellow
Virginians. They were from adjoining counties, where the one had
practised law and the other had driven a stage. There were differences
in breeding, education, and employment; but around these, recognized by
both, stretched the enormous plane of humanity. They met there in simple
brotherliness. To-night, however, Cleave had spoken for silence. "I want
to be quiet for a while, Harris.--There is something I have to think
of."

[Illustration: THE LOVERS]

The night was all too short for what he had to think of. The pink flush
of dawn, the distant view of Ewell's tents, came too soon. It was hard
to lower the height and swell of the mind, to push back the surging
thoughts, to leave the lift and wonder, the moonlight, and the flowering
way. Here, however, were the pickets; and while he waited for the
corporal of the guard, standing with Harris on a little hill, before
them the pink sky, below them a peach orchard, pink too, with a
lace-like mist wreathing the trees, he put golden afternoon and
moonlight night in the bottom of his heart and laid duty atop.

Ewell's camp, spread over the rolling hills and lighted by a splendid
sunrise, lay imposingly. To the eyes of the men from the Valley the
ordered white tents of Trimble's and Taylor's and the Maryland line had
an air luxuriously martial. Everything seemed to gleam and shine. The
guns of the parked batteries gave back the light, the colours seemed
silken and fine, the very sunrise gun had a sonorousness lacking to
Chew's Blakeley, or to McLaughlin's six-pounders, and the bugles blowing
reveille a silvery quality most remarkable. As for the smoke from the
camp-fires--"Lord save us!" said Harris, "I believe they're broiling
partridges! Of all the dandy pla