into the gigantic. Jack
Montjoy may have been a scoundrel,--doubtless he was one,--but, with all
his misdeeds on his shoulders, he had lived pure game to the end.

A fresh bleeding of Dan's wound brought on a sudden faintness, and he fell
heavily upon Big Abel's arm. With the pain a groan hovered an instant on
his lips, but, closing his eyes, he bit it back and lay silent. For the
first time in his life there had come to him, like an impulse, the
knowledge that he must not lower his father's name.

BOOK FOURTH

THE RETURN OF THE VANQUISHED

I

THE RAGGED ARMY

The brigade had halted to gather rations in a corn field beside the road,
and Dan, lying with his head in the shadow of a clump of sumach, hungrily
regarded the "roasting ears" which Pinetop had just rolled in the ashes. A
malarial fever, which he had contracted in the swamps of the Chickahominy,
had wasted his vitality until he had begun to look like the mere shadow of
himself; gaunt, unwashed, hollow-eyed, yet wearing his torn gray jacket and
brimless cap as jauntily as he had once worn his embroidered waistcoats.
His hand trembled as he reached out for his share of the green corn, but
weakened as he was by sickness and starvation, the defiant humour shone all
the clearer in his eyes. He had still the heart for a whistle, Bland had
said last night, looking at him a little wistfully.

As he lay there, with the dusty sumach shrub above him, he saw the ragged
army pushing on into the turnpike that led to Maryland. Lean, sun-scorched,
half-clothed, dropping its stragglers like leaves upon the roadside,
marching in borrowed rags, and fighting with the weapons of its enemies,
dirty, fevered, choking with the hot dust of the turnpike--it still pressed
onward, bending like a blade beneath Lee's hand. For this army of the sick,
fighting slow agues, old wounds, and the sharp diseases that follow on
green food, was becoming suddenly an army of invasion. The road led into
Maryland, and the brigades swept into it, jesting like schoolboys on a
frolic.

Dan, stretched exhausted beside the road, ate his ear of corn, and idly
watched the regiment that was marching by--marching, not with the even
tread of regular troops, but with scattered ranks and broken column, each
man limping in worn-out shoes, at his own pace. They were not fancy
soldiers, these men, he felt as he looked after them. They were not
imposing upon the road, but when their chance came t