CHAPTER I.
THE cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs
revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. As the landscape
changed from brown to green, the army awak- ened, and began to tremble
with eagerness at the noise of rumors. It cast its eyes upon the roads,
which were growing from long troughs of liquid mud to proper
thoroughfares. A river, amber- tinted in the shadow of its banks, purled
at the army\'s feet; and at night, when the stream had become of a
sorrowful blackness, one could see across it the red, eyelike gleam of
hostile camp- fires set in the low brows of distant hills.
Once a certain tall soldier developed virtues and went resolutely to
wash a shirt. He came flying back from a brook waving his garment
bannerlike. He was swelled with a tale he had heard from a reliable
friend, who had heard it from a truthful cavalryman, who had heard it
from his trustworthy brother, one of the order- lies at division headquarters.
He adopted the important air of a herald in red and gold. "We\'re goin\' t\'
move t\' morrah--sure," he said pompously to a group in the company street.
"We\'re goin\' \'way up the river, cut across, an\' come around in behint \'em."
To his attentive audience he drew a loud and elaborate plan of a very
brilliant campaign. When he had finished, the blue-clothed men scattered
into small arguing groups between the rows of squat brown huts. A
negro teamster who had been dancing upon a cracker box with the
hilarious encouragement of twoscore soldiers was deserted. He sat
mournfully down. Smoke drifted lazily from a multitude of quaint chimneys.