tnam raises to the light of the first lantern
a hairy, bushy object that he holds in his hand; it is a false beard,
and a big one.

"By Jove!" says the lieutenant. "It must be some rebel spy."

III.

Daybreak, and the broad expanse of valley opening away to the south is
just lighting up in chill, half-reluctant fashion, as though the night
had been far too short or the revels of yester-even far too long. There
is a swish and plash of rapid running waters close at hand, and here and
there, where the stream is dammed by rocky ridge, the wisps of fog rise
slowly into air, mingling with and adding to the prevailing tone of
chilly gray. Through these fog-wreaths there stands revealed a massive
barrier of wooded and rock-ribbed heights, towering aloft and shutting
out the eastern sky, all their crests a-swim in floating cloud, all
their rugged foothills dotted with the tentage of a sleeping army. Here,
close at hand on the banks of the rushing river, a sentry paces slowly
to and fro, the dew dripping from his shouldered musket and beading on
his cartridge-box. The collar of his light-blue overcoat is muffled up
about his ears, and his forage cap is pulled far down over his blinking
eyes. As he paces southward he can see along the stream-bed camps and
pale-blue ghosts of sentries pacing as wearily as himself in the wan and
cheerless light. Trees are dripping with heavy charge of moisture that
the faintest whiff of morning air sends showering on the bank beneath;
and a little deluge of the kind coming suddenly down upon this
particular sentry as he strolls under the spreading branches serves to
augment the expression of general weariness and disgust, which by no
means distinguishes him from his more distant fellows, but evokes no
further comment than a momentary huddling of head and shoulders into the
depths of the blue collar, and the briefest possible mention of the last
place of all others one would be apt to connect with cooling showers.
Facing about and slouching along the other way the sentry sees a picture
that, had he poetry or love of the grand and beautiful in his soul,
would a thousand-fold compensate him for his enforced vigil. Every
moment, as the timid light grows bolder with its reinforcement from the
east, there opens a vista before his eyes that few men could look upon
unmoved. To his right the brawling Shenandoah, swift and swirling, goes
rushing through its last rapids, as though bent on having one