in which Anna kept her part, her mind's
eye still saw the farther scene as it changed again and the gray dawn
and gray host furtively rose together and together silently spread
through the deep woods. She watched the day increase and noon soar up
and sink away while the legions of Hardee, Bragg, Polk and Breckinridge
slowly writhed out of their perplexed folds and set themselves, still
undetected in their three successive lines of battle. She beheld the
sun set calm and clear, the two hosts lie down once more, one in its
tents, the other on its arms, the leafy night hang over them resplendent
with stars, its watches near by, the Southern lines reawaken in
recovered strength, spring up and press forward exultantly to the awful
issue, and the Sabbath dawn brighten into a faultless day with the boom
of the opening gun.

As the ladies drew up behind the throng and across the throat of
Commercial Alley the dire List began to flutter from the Picayune office
in greedy palms and over and among dishevelled heads like a feeding
swarm of white pigeons. News there was as well as names, but every eye
devoured the names first and then--unless some name struck lightning in
the heart, as Anna saw it do every here and there and for that poor old
man over yonder--after the names the news.

"Nan, we needn't stay if you--"

"Oh, Miranda, isn't all this ours?"

The bulletin boards were already telling in outline, ahead of the list,
thrilling things about the Orleans Guards, the whirlwind onset of whose
maiden bayonets had captured double its share of the first camp taken
from the amazed, unbreakfasted enemy, and who again and again, hour by
hour, by the half-mile and mile, had splendidly helped to drive
him--while he hammered back with a deadly stubbornness all but a match
for their fury. Through forests, across clearings, over streams and bogs
and into and out of ravines and thickets they had swept, seizing
transiently a whole field battery, permanently hundreds of prisoners,
and covering the strife's broad wake with even more appalling numbers
of their own dead and wounded than of the foe's: wailing wounded,
ghastly, grimy dead, who but yesterday were brothers, cousins and
playmates of these very men snatching and searching the list. They told,
those boards, of the Washington Artillery (fifth company, never before
under fire) being thanked on the field by one of the "big generals,"
their chests and wheels shot half to splinters but n