lling upon
the blue working party. Reilly's battery was brought up; a shell or two
fired. The blue left the field, and the grey pioneers somehow fought the
flames and rebuilt the bridge. An hour was gone before the advance could
cross on a trembling structure. Over at last, the troops went on,
southward still, to Hundley Corner. Here Ewell's division joined them,
and here to the vague surprise of an exhausted army came the order to
halt. The Army of the Valley went into bivouac three miles north of that
right which, hours before, it was to have turned. It was near sunset. As
the troops stacked arms, to the south of them, on the other side of
Beaver Dam Creek, burst out an appalling cannonade. Trimble, a veteran
warrior, was near Jackson. "That has the sound of a general engagement,
sir! Shall we advance?"

Jackson looked at him with a curious serenity. "It is the batteries on
the Chickahominy covering General Hill's passage of the stream. He will
bivouac over there, and to-morrow will see the battle--Have you ever
given much attention, general, to the subject of growth in grace?"

CHAPTER XXX

AT THE PRESIDENT'S

A large warehouse on Main Street in Richmond had been converted into a
hospital. Conveniently situated, it had received many of the more
desperately wounded from Williamsburg and Seven Pines and from the
skirmishes about the Chickahominy and up and down the Peninsula. Typhoid
and malarial cases, sent in from the lines, were also here in
abundance. To a great extent, as June wore on, the wounded from
Williamsburg and Seven Pines had died and been buried, or recovered and
returned to their regiments, or, in case of amputations, been carried
away after awhile by their relatives. Typhoid and malaria could hardly
be said to decrease, but yet, two days before the battle of
Mechanicsville, the warehouse seemed, comparatively speaking, a cool and
empty place.

It was being prepared against the battles for which the beleaguered city
waited--waited heartsick and aghast or lifted and fevered, as the case
might be. On the whole, the tragic mask was not worn; the city
determinedly smiled. The three floors of the warehouse, roughly divided
into wards, smelled of strong soap and water and home-made
disinfectants. The windows were wide; swish, swish! went the mops upon
the floors. A soldier, with his bandaged leg stretched on a chair before
him, took to scolding: "Women certainly are funny! What's the sense of
w