friends. The Loyal Legion was an officers'
organization, and to that extent aristocratic; but worldly success
counted for nothing in it--some of its members were struggling to exist
on their pensions, and were as much thought of as a man like General
Prentice, who was president of one of the city's largest banks, and a
rich man, even in New York's understanding of that term.

The presiding officer introduced "Colonel Robert Selden, who will read
the paper of the evening: 'Recollections of Spottsylvania.'" Montague
started at the name--for "Bob" Selden had been one of his father's
messmates, and had fought all through the Peninsula Campaign at his
side.

He was a tall, hawk-faced man with a grey imperial. The room was still
as he arose, and after adjusting his glasses, he began to read his
story. He recalled the situation of the Army of the Potomac in the
spring of 1864; for three years it had marched and fought, stumbling
through defeat after defeat, a mighty weapon, lacking only a man who
could wield it. Now at last the man had come--one who would put them
into the battle and give them a chance to fight. So they had marched
into the Wilderness, and there Lee struck them, and for three days they
groped in a blind thicket, fighting hand to hand, amid suffocating
smoke. The Colonel read in a quiet, unassuming voice; but one could see
that he had hold of his hearers by the light that crossed their
features when he told of the army's recoil from the shock, and of the
wild joy that ran through the ranks when they took up their march to
the left, and realized that this time they were not going back.--So
they came to the twelve days' grapple of the Spottsylvania Campaign.

There was still the Wilderness thicket; the enemy's intrenchments,
covering about eight miles, lay in the shape of a dome, and at the
cupola of it were breastworks of heavy timbers banked with earth, and
with a ditch and a tangle of trees in front. The place was the keystone
of the Confederate arch, and the name of it was "the Angle"--"Bloody
Angle!" Montague heard the man who sat next to him draw in his breath,
as if a spasm of pain had shot through him.

At dawn two brigades had charged and captured the place. The enemy
returned to the attack, and for twenty hours thereafter the two armies
fought, hurling regiment after regiment and brigade after brigade into
the trenches. There was a pouring rain, and the smoke hung black about
them; they could only s