g in the Wilderness, moved forward to
fight within three days another battle as great.

The story of either army was the same. The general in his tent touched
the spring that set all things in motion. The soldiers rose from the hot
ground on which they lay in a stupor rather than sleep. Two streams of
wounded poured to the rear, one to the North and one to the South. The
horses, like their masters, worn and scarred like them, too, were
harnessed to cannon and wagon; the men ate as they worked; there was no
time for delay. This was to be a race, grand and terrible in its nature,
with great battles as incidents. The stakes were high, and the players
played with deadly earnestness.

Both Generals sent orders to hurry and themselves saw that it was done.
The battle of yesterday and the day before was as a thing long past; no
time to think of it now. The dead were left for the moment in the
Wilderness as they had fallen. The air was filled with commands to the
men, shouts to the horses, the sough of wheels in the mud, the breaking
of boughs under weight, and the clank of metal. The Wilderness, torn now
by shells and bullets and scorched by the fires, waved over two armies
gloomier and more somber than ever, deserving to the full its name.

They were still in the Wilderness, and it had lost none of its ominous
aspects. Far to left and right yet burned the forest fires set by the
shells, flaring luridly in the intense blackness that characterized
those nights. The soldiers as they hurried on saw the ribbons and coils
of flame leaping from tree-top to tree-top, and sometimes the languid
winds blew the ashes in their faces. Now and then they crossed parts of
the forest where it had passed, and the earth was hot to their feet.
Around them lay smouldering logs and boughs, and from these fallen
embers tongues of flame arose. Overhead, the moon and stars were shut
out by the clouds and smoke and vapour.

Even with a passion for a new conflict rising in them, the soldiers as
they hurried on felt the weirdness, the satanic character of the
battleground. The fitful flashes of lightning often showed faces stamped
with awe; wet boughs of low-growing trees held them back with a moist
and sticky touch; the low rumble of thunder came from the far horizon
and its tremendous echo passed slowly through the Wilderness; and
mingled again with this sound was an occasional cannon shot as the
fringes of the two armies hastening on passed the tim